Job 4

4:1 Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered:

4:2 “If someone should attempt a word with you,

will you be impatient?

But who can refrain from speaking?

4:3 Look, you have instructed many;

you have strengthened feeble hands.

4:4 Your words have supported those

who stumbled,

and you have strengthened the knees

that gave way.

4:5 But now the same thing comes to you,

and you are discouraged;

it strikes you,

and you are terrified.

4:6 Is not your piety your confidence,

and your blameless ways your hope?

4:7 Call to mind now:

Who, being innocent, ever perished?

And where were upright people ever destroyed?

4:8 Even as I have seen, those who plow iniquity

and those who sow trouble reap the same.

4:9 By the breath of God they perish,

and by the blast of his anger they are consumed.

4:10 There is the roaring of the lion

and the growling of the young lion,

but the teeth of the young lions are broken.

4:11 The mighty lion perishes for lack of prey,

and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.

4:12 “Now a word was secretly brought to me,

and my ear caught a whisper of it.

4:13 In the troubling thoughts of the dreams in the night

when a deep sleep falls on men,

4:14 a trembling gripped me – and a terror! –

and made all my bones shake.

4:15 Then a breath of air passes by my face;

it makes the hair of my flesh stand up.

4:16 It stands still,

but I cannot recognize its appearance;

an image is before my eyes,

and I hear a murmuring voice:

4:17 “Is a mortal man righteous before God?

Or a man pure before his Creator?

4:18 If God puts no trust in his servants

and attributes folly to his angels,

4:19 how much more to those who live in houses of clay,

whose foundation is in the dust,

who are crushed like a moth?

4:20 They are destroyed between morning and evening;

they perish forever without anyone regarding it.

4:21 Is not their excess wealth taken away from them?

They die, yet without attaining wisdom.