^1. Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:

^2. "If someone ventures a word with you, will you be impatient? But who can keep from speaking?

^3. Think how you have instructed many, how you have strengthened feeble hands.

^4. Your words have supported those who stumbled; you have strengthened faltering knees.

^5. But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged; it strikes you, and you are dismayed.

^6. Should not your piety be your confidence and your blameless ways your hope?

^7. "Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed?

^8. As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it.

^9. At the breath of God they are destroyed; at the blast of his anger they perish.

^10. The lions may roar and growl, yet the teeth of the great lions are broken.

^11. The lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.

^12. "A word was secretly brought to me, my ears caught a whisper of it.

^13. Amid disquieting dreams in the night, when deep sleep falls on men,

^14. fear and trembling seized me and made all my bones shake.

^15. A spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body stood on end.

^16. It stopped, but I could not tell what it was. A form stood before my eyes, and I heard a hushed voice:

^17. `Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can a man be more pure than his Maker?

^18. If God places no trust in his servants, if he charges his angels with error,

^19. how much more those who live in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who are crushed more readily than a moth!

^20. Between dawn and dusk they are broken to pieces; unnoticed, they perish forever.

^21. Are not the cords of their tent pulled up, so that they die without wisdom?' [1]