Job 4

2 “Have people often spoken to you in your trouble?

But who could bear the force of your words?

3 You yourself have set many people straight

and put heart into weak hands;

4 your words raised up men who were giving way,

and you wrapped courage around failing knees.

5 Now pain has come to you and touched you,

and now you are agitated.

6 Is your fear of God not set in folly —

your hope too, and the innocence of your way?

7 Remember, then: who ever perished while he was clean?

When were the true ever destroyed root and all?

8 Here is what I have seen: men plowing what is wrong,

and those who sow it reaping pain for themselves.

9 At the Lord’s command they perish,

and at the breath of his anger they are wiped away.

10 The strength of the lion, the voice of the lioness,

the proud cry of serpents — all of it is put out.

11 The ant-lion died for want of prey,

and the lion’s cubs abandoned one another.

12 If there had been one true word in what you said,

none of these evils would have met you.

Will my own ear not take in astonishing things from him?

13 Terrors, and a sound in the night,

fear falling on people —

14 a shudder met me, and trembling,

and it shook my bones hard.

15 A spirit came across my face,

and the hair on me stood up, and my flesh with it.

16 I got to my feet, and I did not know it.

I looked, and there was no shape before my eyes —

only a breath of air, and a voice I heard:

17 ‘What is this? Will a mortal be clean before the Lord,

or a man be blameless on the strength of his own works?

18 If he does not trust his own servants,

and finds something crooked in his messengers,

19 what of those who live in houses of clay —

and we ourselves are made out of the same clay?

He strikes them down like a moth.

20 From morning to evening they are gone;

they perished, because they could not help themselves.

21 He breathed on them and they dried up;

they perished for want of wisdom.’”