1 Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said:
2 "Should someone attempt a word with you, would it weary you? But who can restrain himself from speaking?
3 Look, you have taught many, and you have made feeble hands strong.
4 Your words have kept the stumbler on his feet, and you have braced the knees that buckled.
5 But now it comes to you, and you grow weary; it reaches you, and you are terrified.
6 Is not your piety your confidence, and the blamelessness of your ways your hope?
7 Think now: who has ever perished being innocent? Where were the upright ever wiped out?
8 As far as I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow mischief harvest it.
9 At the breath of God they perish; at the blast of his nostrils they are finished.
10 The lion roars, the fierce lion growls, yet the teeth of the young lions are broken.
11 The mighty lion perishes for want of prey, and the whelps of the lioness are scattered.
12 A word came stealing to me; my ear received a whisper of it.
13 In the unsettling thoughts of night visions, when deep sleep falls upon men,
14 fear came on me, and trembling, and it set all my bones shaking.
15 A spirit glided past my face; the hair on my body bristled.
16 It stood, but I could not discern its look; a shape was before my eyes; there was a hush, and then I heard a voice:
17 'Can mortal man be in the right before God, or a man be clean before his Maker?
18 See, he does not rely on his servants, and his angels he charges with folly;
19 how much more those who dwell in clay houses, whose base is in the dust, who are crushed sooner than a moth!
20 Between morning and evening they are beaten to pieces; unnoticed, they perish for ever.
21 Is not their tent cord plucked up within them? They die, and that without wisdom.'