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Job 4

¹Then Eli'phaz the Te'manite answered:

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

³Behold, you have instructed many, and you have strengthened the weak hands.

⁴Your words have upheld him who was stumbling, and you have made firm the feeble knees.

⁵But now it has come to you, and you are impatient; it touches you, and you are dismayed.

⁶Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope?

⁷"Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off+?

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

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

¹⁰The roar of the lion, the voice of the fierce lion, the teeth of the young lions, are broken.

¹¹The strong lion perishes for lack of prey, and the whelps of the lioness are scattered.

¹²"Now a word was brought to me stealthily, my ear received the whisper of it.

¹³Amid thoughts from visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men,

¹⁴dread came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones shake.

¹⁵A spirit glided past my face; the hair of my flesh stood up.

¹⁶It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance. A form was before my eyes; there was silence, then I heard a voice:

¹⁷`an mortal man be righteous before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker?

¹⁸Even in his servants he puts no trust, and his angels he charges with error;

¹⁹how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before the moth.

²⁰Between morning and evening they are destroyed; they perish for ever without any regarding it.

²¹If their tent-cord is plucked up within them, do they not die, and that without wisdom?'

Job 4 (RSV)

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Job

Chapter 4

4 of 42