Eliphaz: the Innocent Prosper

1Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:

2“If one ventures a word with you, will you be wearied? Yet who can keep from speaking?

3Surely you have instructed many, and have strengthened their feeble hands.

4Your words have steadied those who stumbled; you have braced the knees that were buckling.

5But now trouble has come upon you, and you are weary. It strikes you, and you are dismayed.

6Is your reverence not your confidence, and the uprightness of your ways your hope?

7Consider now, I plead: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Or where have the upright been destroyed?

8As I have observed, those who plow iniquity and those who sow trouble reap the same.

9By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of His anger they are consumed.

10The lion may roar, and the fierce lion may growl, yet the teeth of the young lions are broken.

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

12Now a word came to me secretly; my ears caught a whisper of it.

13In disquieting visions in the night, when deep sleep falls on men,

14fear and trembling came over me and made all my bones shudder.

15Then a spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body bristled.

16It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance; a form loomed before my eyes, and I heard a whispering voice:

17‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God, or a man more pure than his Maker?

18If God puts no trust in His servants, and He charges His angels with error,

19how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who can be crushed like a moth!

20They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk; unnoticed, they perish forever.

21Are not their tent cords pulled up, so that they die without wisdom?’