Home Master Index
←Prev   Job 4 as rendered by/in  Next→ 



4:1  Then Eliphaz the Temanite responded:
4:2  “If one of us attempts to reason with you, will you be offended? Yet who can refrain from speaking?
4:3  Recall how you instructed many others and strengthened their feeble hands.
4:4  Your words have supported those who were staggering, and you have made firm their faltering knees.
4:5  “But now that adversity has befallen you, you have grown impatient; you are dismayed because it has troubled you.
4:6  Does not your piety give you confidence and the integrity of your life offer you hope?
4:7  Can you recall even one innocent person who perished? Where have the upright ever been destroyed?
4:8  “My experience has been that those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap no other harvest.
4:9  At the breath of God they are destroyed; at the blast of his anger they perish.
4:10  Even though they are as fierce as lions, their fangs will be broken off.
4:11  The lion perishes for lack of prey, and the whelps of the lioness are abandoned.
4:12  “A word was quietly brought to me; a whisper of it reached my ears.
4:13  It was made known to me in nighttime visions when sleep comes upon all men.
4:14  I was seized with terror and trembling that caused all my bones to shake violently.
4:15  A spirit brushed across my face, causing the hairs on my body to bristle.
4:16  It then halted, but I could not discern its shape. An image was before my eyes, and then I heard a voice whisper:
4:17  “ ‘Can a human being appear upright in the presence of God? Can a mortal seem pure before its Maker?
4:18  God places no trust in his servants, and he finds fault even with his angels.
4:19  How much more will this be true of those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust and who can be crushed as easily as a moth.
4:20  From morning to evening they are cut down; they perish forever, with hardly a thought from anyone.
4:21  Their tent-pegs are plucked up, and they die devoid of wisdom.’