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Job 4

Eliphaz’s First Response to Job

¹Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied to Job:

²“Will you be patient and let me say a word? For who could keep from speaking out?

³“In the past you have encouraged many people; you have strengthened those who were weak.

⁴Your words have supported those who were falling; you encouraged those with shaky knees.

⁵But now when trouble strikes, you lose heart. You are terrified when it touches you.

⁶Doesn’t your reverence for God give you confidence? Doesn’t your life of integrity give you hope?

⁷“Stop and think! Do the innocent die? When have the upright been destroyed?

⁸My experience shows that those who plant trouble and cultivate evil will harvest the same.

⁹A breath from God destroys them. They vanish in a blast of his anger.

¹⁰The lion roars and the wildcat snarls, but the teeth of strong lions will be broken.

¹¹The fierce lion will starve for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness will be scattered.

¹²“This truth was given to me in secret, as though whispered in my ear.

¹³It came to me in a disturbing vision at night, when people are in a deep sleep.

¹⁴Fear gripped me, and my bones trembled.

¹⁵A spirit swept past my face, and my hair stood on end.

¹⁶The spirit stopped, but I couldn’t see its shape. There was a form before my eyes. In the silence I heard a voice say,

¹⁷‘Can a mortal be innocent before God? Can anyone be pure before the Creator?’

¹⁸“If God does not trust his own angels and has charged his messengers with foolishness,

¹⁹how much less will he trust people made of clay! They are made of dust, crushed as easily as a moth.

²⁰They are alive in the morning but dead by evening, gone forever without a trace.

²¹Their tent-cords are pulled and the tent collapses, and they die in ignorance.

Job 4 (NLT)

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Job

Chapter 4

4 of 42