Job 4.20
English standard version

Intervention n° 1 d’Éliphaz

¹ Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said:
² If one ventures a word with you, will you be impatient?
Yet who can keep from speaking?
³ Behold, you have instructed many,
and you have strengthened the weak hands.
⁴ Your words have upheld him who was stumbling,
and you have made firm the feeble knees.
⁵ But now it has come to you, and you are impatient;
it touches you, and you are dismayed.
⁶ Is not your fear of God your confidence,
and the integrity of your ways your hope?
⁷ Remember: who that was innocent ever perished?
Or where were the upright cut off?
⁸ As I have seen, those who plow iniquity
and sow trouble reap the same.
⁹ By the breath of God they perish,
and by the blast of his anger they are consumed.
¹⁰ The roar of the lion, the voice of the fierce lion,
the teeth of the young lions are broken.
¹¹ The strong lion perishes for lack of prey,
and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.
¹² Now a word was brought to me stealthily;
my ear received the whisper of it.
¹³ Amid thoughts from visions of the night,
when deep sleep falls on men,
¹⁴ dread came upon me, and trembling,
which made all my bones shake.
¹⁵ A spirit glided past my face;
the hair of my flesh stood up.
¹⁶ It stood still,
but I could not discern its appearance.
A form was before my eyes;
there was silence, then I heard a voice:
¹⁷ Can mortal man be in the right before God?
Can a man be pure before his Maker?
¹⁸ Even in his servants he puts no trust,
and his angels he charges with error;
¹⁹ how much more those who dwell in houses of clay,
whose foundation is in the dust,
who are crushed like the moth.
²⁰ Between morning and evening they are beaten to pieces;
they perish forever without anyone regarding it.
²¹ Is not their tent-cord plucked up within them,
do they not die, and that without wisdom?