New Living Translation | Berean Study Bible |
1Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied to Job: | 1Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied: |
2“Will you be patient and let me say a word? For who could keep from speaking out? | 2“If one ventures a word with you, will you be wearied? Yet who can keep from speaking? |
3“In the past you have encouraged many people; you have strengthened those who were weak. | 3Surely you have instructed many, and have strengthened their feeble hands. |
4Your words have supported those who were falling; you encouraged those with shaky knees. | 4Your words have steadied those who stumbled; you have braced the knees that were buckling. |
5But now when trouble strikes, you lose heart. You are terrified when it touches you. | 5But now trouble has come upon you, and you are weary. It strikes you, and you are dismayed. |
6Doesn’t your reverence for God give you confidence? Doesn’t your life of integrity give you hope? | 6Is your reverence not your confidence, and the uprightness of your ways your hope? |
7“Stop and think! Do the innocent die? When have the upright been destroyed? | 7Consider now, I plead: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Or where have the upright been destroyed? |
8My experience shows that those who plant trouble and cultivate evil will harvest the same. | 8As I have observed, those who plow iniquity and those who sow trouble reap the same. |
9A breath from God destroys them. They vanish in a blast of his anger. | 9By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of His anger they are consumed. |
10The lion roars and the wildcat snarls, but the teeth of strong lions will be broken. | 10The lion may roar, and the fierce lion may growl, yet the teeth of the young lions are broken. |
11The fierce lion will starve for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness will be scattered. | 11The old lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered. |
12“This truth was given to me in secret, as though whispered in my ear. | 12Now a word came to me secretly; my ears caught a whisper of it. |
13It came to me in a disturbing vision at night, when people are in a deep sleep. | 13In disquieting visions in the night, when deep sleep falls on men, |
14Fear gripped me, and my bones trembled. | 14fear and trembling came over me and made all my bones shudder. |
15A spirit swept past my face, and my hair stood on end. | 15Then a spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body bristled. |
16The spirit stopped, but I couldn’t see its shape. There was a form before my eyes. In the silence I heard a voice say, | 16It 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 innocent before God? Can anyone be pure before the Creator?’ | 17‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God, or a man more pure than his Maker? |
18“If God does not trust his own angels and has charged his messengers with foolishness, | 18If God puts no trust in His servants, and He charges His angels with error, |
19how much less will he trust people made of clay! They are made of dust, crushed as easily as a moth. | 19how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who can be crushed like a moth! |
20They are alive in the morning but dead by evening, gone forever without a trace. | 20They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk; unnoticed, they perish forever. |
21Their tent-cords are pulled and the tent collapses, and they die in ignorance. | 21Are not their tent cords pulled up, so that they die without wisdom?’ |
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