Job 4 · Clearspring

Eliphaz: The Innocent Prosper

¹Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:+ ²“If one ventures a word with you, will you be wearied? Yet who can keep from speaking?+ ³Surely you have instructed many, and have strengthened their feeble hands.+ ⁴Your words have steadied those who stumbled; you have braced the knees that were buckling.+ ⁵But now trouble has come upon you, and you are weary. It strikes you, and you are dismayed.+ ⁶Is your reverence not your confidence, and the uprightness of your ways your hope?+ ⁷Consider now, I plead: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Or where have the upright been destroyed?+ ⁸As I have observed, those who plow iniquity and those who sow trouble reap the same.+ ⁹By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of His anger they are consumed.+ ¹⁰The lion may roar, and the fierce lion may growl, yet the teeth of the young lions are broken.+ ¹¹The old lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.+ ¹²Now a word came to me secretly; my ears caught a whisper of it.+ ¹³In disquieting visions in the night, when deep sleep falls on men,+ ¹⁴fear and trembling came over me and made all my bones shudder.+ ¹⁵Then a spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body bristled.+ 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 more righteous than God, or a man more pure than his Maker?+ ¹⁸If God puts no trust in His servants, and He charges His angels with error,+ 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 smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk; unnoticed, they perish forever.+ ²¹Are not their tent cords pulled up, so that they die without wisdom?’’’+

Eliphaz: The Innocent Prosper

Study Job 4