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4:1  Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied to Job:
4:2  "Will you be patient and let me say a word? For who could keep from speaking out?
4:3  "In the past you have encouraged many people; you have strengthened those who were weak.
4:4  Your words have supported those who were falling; you encouraged those with shaky knees.
4:5  But now when trouble strikes, you lose heart. You are terrified when it touches you.
4:6  Doesn't your reverence for God give you confidence? Doesn't your life of integrity give you hope?
4:7  "Stop and think! Do the innocent die? When have the upright been destroyed?
4:8  My experience shows that those who plant trouble and cultivate evil will harvest the same.
4:9  A breath from God destroys them. They vanish in a blast of his anger.
4:10  The lion roars and the wildcat snarls, but the teeth of strong lions will be broken.
4:11  The fierce lion will starve for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness will be scattered.
4:12  "This truth was given to me in secret, as though whispered in my ear.
4:13  It came to me in a disturbing vision at night, when people are in a deep sleep.
4:14  Fear gripped me, and my bones trembled.
4:15  A spirit swept past my face, and my hair stood on end.
4:16  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,
4:17  'Can a mortal be innocent before God? Can anyone be pure before the Creator?'
4:18  "If God does not trust his own angels and has charged his messengers with foolishness,
4:19  how much less will he trust people made of clay! They are made of dust, crushed as easily as a moth.
4:20  They are alive in the morning but dead by evening, gone forever without a trace.
4:21  Their tent-cords are pulled and the tent collapses, and they die in ignorance.