איוב ד

Then Eliphaz the Temanite said in reply:

If one ventures a word with you, will it be too much?
But who can hold back his words?

See, you have encouraged many;
You have strengthened failing hands.

Your words have kept him who stumbled from falling;
You have braced knees that gave way.

But now that it overtakes you, it is too much;
It reaches you, and you are unnerved.

Is not your piety your confidence,
Your integrity your hope?

Think now, what innocent ever perished?
Where have the upright been destroyed?

As I have seen, those who plow evil
And sow mischief reap them.

They perish by a blast from the divine,
Are gone at the breath of God’s nostrils.

The lion may roar, the cub may howl,
But the teeth of the king of beasts are broken.

The lion perishes for lack of prey,
And its whelps are scattered.

A word came to me in stealth;
My ear caught a whisper of it.

In thought-filled visions of the night,
When deep sleep falls on everyone,

Fear and trembling came upon me,
Causing all my bones to quake with fright.

A wind passed by me,
Making the hair of my flesh bristle.

It halted; its appearance was strange to me;
A form loomed before my eyes;
I heard a murmur, a voice,

“Can a mortal be acquitted by God?
Can a man be cleared by his Maker?

If God’s own servants cannot be trusted,
And angels receive reproach,

How much less those who dwell in houses of clay,
Whose origin is dust,
Who are crushed like the moth,

Shattered between daybreak and evening,
Perishing forever, unnoticed.

Their cord is pulled up
And they die, and not with wisdom.”