Eliphaz: The Innocent Prosper

Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:

“If one ventures a word with you, will you be wearied?

Yet who can keep from speaking?

Surely you have instructed many,

and have strengthened their feeble hands.

Your words have steadied those who stumbled;

you have braced the knees that were buckling.

But now trouble has come upon you, and you are weary.

It strikes you, and you are dismayed.

Is your reverence not your confidence,

and the uprightness of your ways your hope?

Consider now, I plead:

Who, being innocent, has ever perished?

Or where have the upright been destroyed?

As I have observed, those who plow iniquity

and those who sow trouble reap the same.

By the breath of God they perish,

and by the blast of His anger they are consumed.

The lion may roar, and the fierce lion may growl,

yet the teeth of the young lions are broken.

The old lion perishes for lack of prey,

and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.

Now a word came to me secretly;

my ears caught a whisper of it.

In disquieting visions in the night,

when deep sleep falls on men,

fear and trembling came over me

and made all my bones shudder.

Then a spirit glided past my face,

and the hair on my body bristled.

It stood still,

but I could not discern its appearance;

a form loomed before my eyes,

and I heard a whispering voice:

‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God,

or a man more pure than his Maker?

If God puts no trust in His servants,

and He charges His angels with error,

how much more those who dwell in houses of clay,

whose foundations are in the dust,

who can be crushed like a moth!

They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk;

unnoticed, they perish forever.

Are not their tent cords pulled up,

so that they die without wisdom?’