1.8 KiB
Eliphaz Speaks
Chapter 4
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Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:
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Should anyone try to speak with you when you are exhausted? Yet who can keep from speaking?
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Indeed, you have instructed many and have strengthened weak hands.
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Your words have steadied the one who was stumbling and braced the knees that were buckling.
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But now that this has happened to you, you have become exhausted. It strikes you, and you are dismayed.
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Isn't your piety your confidence, and the integrity of your life your hope?
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Consider: Who has perished when he was innocent? Where have the honest been destroyed?
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In my experience, those who plow injustice and those who sow trouble reap the same.
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They perish at a single blast from God and come to an end by the breath of his nostrils.
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The lion may roar and the fierce lion growl, but the teeth of young lions are broken.
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The strong lion dies if it catches no prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.
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A word was brought to me in secret; my ears caught a whisper of it.
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Among unsettling thoughts from visions in the night, when deep sleep comes over men,
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fear and trembling came over me and made all my bones shake.
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I felt a draft on my face, and the hair on my body stood up.
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A figure stood there, but I could not recognize its appearance; a form loomed before my eyes. I heard a whispering voice:
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"Can a mortal be righteous before God? Can a man be more pure than his Maker?"
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If God puts no trust in his servants and he charges his angels with foolishness,
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how much more those who dwell in clay houses, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed like a moth!
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They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk; they perish forever while no one notices.
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Are their tent cords not pulled up? They die without wisdom.