Eliphaz’s First Response to Job
4 Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said,
2 “If someone would test a word with you, would you be offended?
But who can refrain from speaking?
3 Look, you have instructed many,
and you have strengthened weak hands.
4 Your words have raised up the one who stumbles,
and you have strengthened knees giving way.
5 But now it has come to you, and you are worn out;
it touches you, and you are horrified.
6 Is not your fear in God your confidence?
Is not your hope even the integrity of your ways?
7 “Think now, who has perished who is innocent?
Or where are the upright destroyed?
8 Just as I have seen, plowers of mischief
and sowers of trouble will reap it.
9 By the breath of God they perish,
and by the blast of his anger they come to an end.
10 The roar of the lion and the voice of a lion in its prime,
and the teeth of the young lions are broken.
11 The lion is perishing without prey,
and the lion’s whelps are scattered.
12 “And a word came stealing to me,
and my ear received the whisper from it.
13 Amid troubling thoughts from night visions,
at the falling of deep sleep on men,
14 dread met me, and trembling,
and it made many of my bones shake.
15 And a spirit glided before my face;
the hair of my flesh bristled.
16 It stood still, but I could not recognize its appearance;
a form was before my eyes;
there was a hush, and I heard a voice:
17 ‘Can a human being be more righteous than God,
or can a man be more pure than his Maker?
18 Look, he does not trust in his servants
and he charges his angels with error.
19 How much more dwellers in clay houses,
whose foundation is in the dust?
They are crushed like a moth.
20 Between morning and evening they are destroyed;
without anyone regarding it they perish forever.
21 Is not their tent cord pulled up within them?
They die, but not in wisdom.’
Footnotes
- Job 4:1
- Job 4:2
- Job 4:6
- Job 4:7
- Job 4:7
- Job 4:9
- Job 4:9
- Job 4:11
- Job 4:15
- Job 4:16
- Job 4:16
- Job 4:20
- Job 4:21
- Job 4:21
