NETtext - 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.