1: Then Eliphaz from Teman spoke up:
2: "Would you mind if I said something to you? Under the circumstances it's hard to keep quiet.
3: You yourself have done this plenty of times, spoken words that clarify, encouraged those who were about to quit.
4: Your words have put stumbling people on their feet, put fresh hope in people about to collapse.
5: But now you're the one in trouble--you're hurting! You've been hit hard and you're reeling from the blow.
6: But shouldn't your devout life give you confidence now? Shouldn't your exemplary life give you hope?
7: "Think! Has a truly innocent person ever ended up on the scrap heap? Do genuinely upright people ever lose out in the end?
8: It's my observation that those who plow evil and sow trouble reap evil and trouble.
9: One breath from God and they fall apart, one blast of his anger and there's nothing left of them.
10: The mighty lion, king of the beasts, roars mightily, but when he's toothless he's useless--
11: No teeth, no prey--and the cubs wander off to fend for themselves.
12: "A word came to me in secret--a mere whisper of a word, but I heard it clearly.
13: It came in a scary dream one night, after I had fallen into a deep, deep sleep.
14: Dread stared me in the face, and Terror. I was scared to death--I shook from head to foot.
15: A spirit glided right in front of me--the hair on my head stood on end.
16: I couldn't tell what it was that appeared there--a blur... and then I heard a muffled voice:
17: How can mere mortals be more righteous than God? How can humans be purer than their Creator?
18: Why, God doesn't even trust his own servants, doesn't even cheer his angels,
19: So how much less these bodies composed of mud, fragile as moths?
20: These bodies of ours are here today and gone tomorrow, and no one even notices--gone without a trace.
21: When the tent stakes are ripped up, the tent collapses--we die and are never the wiser for having lived.'