1. Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:
2. “If someone ventures a word with you, will you be impatient? But who can keep from speaking?
3. Think how you have instructed many, how you have strengthened feeble hands.
4. Your words have supported those who stumbled; you have strengthened faltering knees.
5. But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged; it strikes you, and you are dismayed.
6. Should not your piety be your confidence and your blameless ways your hope?
7. “Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed?
8. As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it.
9. At the breath of God they perish; at the blast of his anger they are no more.
10. The lions may roar and growl, yet the teeth of the great lions are broken.
11. The lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.
12. “A word was secretly brought to me, my ears caught a whisper of it.
13. Amid disquieting dreams in the night, when deep sleep falls on people,
14. fear and trembling seized me and made all my bones shake.
15. A spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body stood on end.