1 ¶ Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said,

2 If we venture to converse with you, will you be offended? yet who can restrain himself from speaking?

3 Look, you have instructed many, and you have strengthened weak hands.

4 Your words have lifted up him who was falling, and you have strengthened knees that were tottering.

5 But now something happens to you, and you lose heart; it touches you, and you are dismayed.

6 Is not your fear of God your confidence, and living blamelessly your hope?

7 ¶ I urge you to consider, Who ever died, without sin? or when were the righteous ever cut off?

8 Just as I have seen, those who plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same.

9 By the blast of God they perish, and by the breath of his nostrils they are consumed.

10 There is the roaring of the lion, and the voice of the fierce lion, but the teeth of the young lions, are broken.

11 The old lion dies for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered abroad.

12 ¶ Now I was told something secretly, and my ear received a whisper of it.

13 Among unsettling thoughts from the visions of the night, when men fall into deep sleep,

14 Fear and trembling came over me, and made all my bones shake.

15 Then a spirit passed before my face; and the hair on my body stood up:

16 Something stood there, but I could not recognize its appearance: a form was before my eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice, saying,

17 Can a human being be more righteous than God? can a man be more pure than his maker?

18 Behold, if God puts no trust in his servants; and charges his angels with sin:

19 How much more those who live in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed like a moth?

20 They are destroyed from dawn to dusk: they perish forever without anyone paying attention.

21 Does not the good that is in them disappear? they die without wisdom.