Capítulo 4

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.

16 - It stopped, but I could not tell what it was. A form stood before my eyes, and I heard a hushed voice:

17 - 'Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can even a strong man be more pure than his Maker?

18 - If God places no trust in his servants, if he charges his angels with error,

19 - how much more those who live in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who are crushed more readily than a moth!

20 - Between dawn and dusk they are broken to pieces; unnoticed, they perish forever.

21 - Are not the cords of their tent pulled up, so that they die without wisdom?'