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