[1] Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:
[2] “If one ventures a word with you, will you be wearied? Yet who can keep from speaking?
[3] Surely you have instructed many, and have strengthened their feeble hands.
[4] Your words have steadied those who stumbled; you have braced the knees that were buckling.
[5] But now trouble has come upon you, and you are weary. It strikes you, and you are dismayed.
[6] Is your reverence not your confidence, and the uprightness of your ways your hope?
[7] Consider now, I plead: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Or where have the upright been destroyed?
[8] As I have observed, those who plow iniquity and those who sow trouble reap the same.
[9] By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of His anger they are consumed.
[10] The lion may roar, and the fierce lion may growl, yet the teeth of the young lions are broken.
[11] The old lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.
[12] Now a word came to me secretly; my ears caught a whisper of it.
[13] In disquieting visions in the night, when deep sleep falls on men,
[14] fear and trembling came over me and made all my bones shudder.
[15] Then a spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body bristled.
[16] It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance; a form loomed before my eyes, and I heard a whispering voice:
[17] ‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God, or a man more pure than his Maker?
[18] If God puts no trust in His servants, and He charges His angels with error,
[19] how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who can be crushed like a moth!
[20] They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk; unnoticed, they perish forever.
[21] Are not their tent cords pulled up, so that they die without wisdom?’