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Eliphaz: The Innocent Prosper

¹ Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:² “If one ventures a word with you, will you be wearied? Yet who can keep from speaking?³ Surely you have instructed many, and have strengthened their feeble hands.⁴ Your words have steadied those who stumbled; you have stabilized the knees that were buckling.⁵ But now trouble has come upon you, and you are weary. It strikes you, and you are dismayed.⁶ Is your reverence not your confidence, and the uprightness of your ways your hope?

⁷ Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Or where have the upright been destroyed?⁸ As I have observed, those who plow iniquity and those who 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 lion may roar, and the fierce lion may growl, yet the teeth of the young lions are broken.¹¹ The old lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.

¹² Now a word came to me secretly; my ears caught a whisper of it.¹³ In disquieting visions in the night, when deep sleep falls on men,¹⁴ fear and trembling came over me and made all my bones shudder.¹⁵ Then a spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body bristled.¹⁶ It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance; a form loomed before my eyes, and I heard a whispering voice:¹⁷ ‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God, or a man more pure than his Maker?¹⁸ If God puts no trust in His servants, and He charges His angels with error,¹⁹ how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who can be crushed like a moth!²⁰ They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk; unnoticed, they perish forever.²¹ Are not their tent cords pulled up, so that they die without wisdom?’