Eliphaz: Job has sinned
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Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:
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“If one ventures a word with you, will you be wearied? Yet who can keep from speaking?
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Surely you have instructed many, and have strengthened their feeble hands.
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Your words have steadied those who stumbled; you have braced the knees that were buckling.
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But now trouble has come upon you, and you are weary. It strikes you, and you are dismayed.
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Is your reverence not your confidence, and the uprightness of your ways your hope?
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Consider now, I plead: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Or where have the upright been destroyed?
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As I have observed, those who plow iniquity and those who sow trouble reap the same.
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By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of His anger they are consumed.
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The lion may roar, and the fierce lion may growl, yet the teeth of the young lions are broken.
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The old lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.
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Now a word came to me secretly; my ears caught a whisper of it.
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In disquieting visions in the night, when deep sleep falls on men,
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fear and trembling came over me and made all my bones shudder.
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Then a spirit (a) glided past my face, and the hair on my body bristled.
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It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance; a form loomed before my eyes, and I heard a whispering voice:
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‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God, or a man more pure than his Maker?
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If God puts no trust in His servants, and He charges His angels with error,
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how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who can be crushed like a moth!
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They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk; unnoticed, they perish forever.
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Are not their tent cords pulled up, so that they die without wisdom?’
Footnotes