ReverendHumble counsel

Job 4

Eliphaz: A Spirit Passed Before My Face

The First Speech of Eliphaz

4:1Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:

4:2“Have you not often been spoken to amid trouble?
Who will endure the force of your words?

4:3For if you admonished many
and encouraged a weak person’s hands,

4:4and raised up the weak with words
and put courage into powerless knees,

4:5yet now pain has come upon you and touched you, and you have become agitated.

4:6Is not your fear in foolishness,
and your hope and the innocence of your way as well?

4:7Remember, then: who perished while pure,
or when were true people utterly uprooted?

4:8As I have seen those who plow improper things,
those who sow them will reap pains for themselves.

4:9By the Lord’s command they will perish;
by the breath of His anger they will disappear.

4:10The lion’s strength, the lioness’s voice,
and the boasting of dragons were extinguished.

4:11The ant-lion perished for lack of food,
and lion cubs abandoned one another.

4:12But if some true word had been among your words,
none of these evils would have met you.
Will not my ear receive extraordinary things from Him?

4:13There were terrors and a nocturnal sound,
fear falling upon people;

4:14a shudder and trembling met me
and shook my bones greatly.

4:15A spirit came upon my face,
and my hair and flesh shuddered.

4:16I stood up and did not recognize it;
I looked, and there was no form before my eyes,
but I heard a breeze and a voice:

4:17‘What then? Can a mortal be pure before the Lord,
or a man blameless on account of his works?

4:18If He places no trust in His servants
and finds something crooked in His angels,

4:19as for those who inhabit houses of clay,
from which we ourselves also are, of the same clay,
He struck them as one does a moth.

4:20From morning until evening they are no more;
because they cannot help themselves, they perished.

4:21For He blew upon them, and they withered;
they perished because they had no wisdom.’

Saints Translation · Liturgical reading edition · V1 · working draft awaiting specialist review.