First Series of Speeches

1 Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:

2 Should anyone try to speak with you

when you are exhausted?

Yet who can keep from speaking?

3 Indeed, you have instructed many

and have strengthened  * weak hands.

4 Your words have steadied the one who was stumbling

and braced the knees that were buckling.  *

5 But now that this has happened to you,

you have become exhausted.

It strikes  * you, and you are dismayed.

6 Isn’t your piety your confidence,

and the integrity of your life  * your hope?  *

7 Consider: Who has perished when he was innocent?

Where have the honest  * been destroyed?  *

8 In my experience, those who plow injustice

and those who sow trouble  * reap the same.  *

9 They perish at a single blast  * from God

and come to an end by the breath of his nostrils.  *

10 The lion may roar and the fierce lion  *  growl,

but the teeth of young lions are broken.  *

11 The strong lion dies if it catches no prey,

and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.  *

12 A word was brought to me in secret;

my ears caught a whisper of it.  *

13 Among unsettling thoughts from visions in the night,  *

when deep sleep  * comes over men,

14 fear and trembling came over me  *

and made all my bones shake.

15 I felt a draft  * on my face,

and the hair on my body stood up.

16 A figure stood there,

but I could not recognize its appearance;

a form loomed before my eyes.

I heard a whispering voice:

17 "Can a mortal be righteous before God?

Can a man be more pure than his Maker? "  *

18 If God puts no trust in his servants

and he charges his angels with foolishness,  *,*

19 how much more those who dwell in clay houses,  *

whose foundation is in the dust,

who are crushed like a moth!

20 They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk;

they perish forever while no one notices.  *

21 Are their tent cords not pulled up?

They die without wisdom.  *