[1] Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied to Job:
[2] “Will you be patient and let me say a word? For who could keep from speaking out?
[3] “In the past you have encouraged many people; you have strengthened those who were weak.
[4] Your words have supported those who were falling; you encouraged those with shaky knees.
[5] But now when trouble strikes, you lose heart. You are terrified when it touches you.
[6] Doesn’t your reverence for God give you confidence? Doesn’t your life of integrity give you hope?
[7] “Stop and think! Do the innocent die? When have the upright been destroyed?
[8] My experience shows that those who plant trouble and cultivate evil will harvest the same.
[9] A breath from God destroys them. They vanish in a blast of his anger.
[10] The lion roars and the wildcat snarls, but the teeth of strong lions will be broken.
[11] The fierce lion will starve for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness will be scattered.
[12] “This truth was given to me in secret, as though whispered in my ear.
[13] It came to me in a disturbing vision at night, when people are in a deep sleep.
[14] Fear gripped me, and my bones trembled.
[15] A spirit swept past my face, and my hair stood on end.
[16] The spirit stopped, but I couldn’t see its shape. There was a form before my eyes. In the silence I heard a voice say,
[17] ‘Can a mortal be innocent before God? Can anyone be pure before the Creator?’
[18] “If God does not trust his own angels and has charged his messengers with foolishness,
[19] how much less will he trust people made of clay! They are made of dust, crushed as easily as a moth.
[20] They are alive in the morning but dead by evening, gone forever without a trace.
[21] Their tent-cords are pulled and the tent collapses, and they die in ignorance.