Job 4

Job 4:1 Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said:

Job 4:2 Should anyone try to speak with you when you are so tired? Yet who can keep from speaking?

Job 4:3 Indeed, you have instructed many and have strengthened weak hands.

Job 4:4 Your words have steadied the one who was stumbling and braced the knees that were buckling.

Job 4:5 But now that this has happened to you, you have become tired. It strikes you, and you are overwhelmed.

Job 4:6 Isn’t your piety your confidence, and the integrity of your life your hope?

Job 4:7 Think about this: who has been destroyed when he was innocent? Where have the honest been made to disappear?

Job 4:8 In my experience, those who plow injustice and those who sow trouble reap the same.

Job 4:9 They are destroyed at a single breathing[1] from God and come to an end by the breath of his nostrils.

Job 4:10 The lion may roar and the fierce lion growl, but the teeth of young lions are broken.

Job 4:11 The strong lion dies if it catches no prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.

Job 4:12 A word was brought to me in secret; my ears caught a whisper of it.

Job 4:13 Among unsettling thoughts from visions in the night, when deep sleep comes over men,

Job 4:14 fear and trembling came over me and made all my bones shake.

Job 4:15 I felt a wind[2]on my face, and the hair on my body stood up.

Job 4:16 A figure stood there, but I could not recognize its appearance; a form loomed before my eyes. I heard a whispering voice:

Job 4:17 “Can a mortal be righteous before God? Can a healthy man be purer than his Maker?”

Job 4:18 If God puts no trust in his servants and he charges his angels with foolishness,

Job 4:19 how much more those who dwell in clay houses, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed like a moth!

Job 4:20 They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk; they are destroyed forever while no one notices.

Job 4:21 Are their tent cords not pulled up? They die without wisdom.

[1] נְשָׁמָה = breathing. Job 4:9.

[2]possibly breath

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Jefferson Vann is pastor of Piney Grove Advent Christian Church in Delco, North Carolina. View all posts by Jefferson Vann