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Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:
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“If someone ventures a word with you, will you be impatient? But who can keep from speaking?
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Think how you have instructed those who stumbled; you have strengthened feeble hands.
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Your words have supported those who stumbled; you have strengthened faltering knees.
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But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged; it strikes you, and you are dismayed.
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Should not your piety be your confidence and your blameless ways your hope?
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“Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed?
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As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it.
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At the breath of God they perish; at the blast of his anger they are no more.
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The lions may roar and growl, yet the teeth of the great lions are broken.
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The lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs fo the lioness are scattered.
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“A word was secretly brought to me, my ears caught a whisper of it.
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Amid disquieting dreams in the night, when deep sleep falls on people,
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fear and trembling seized me and made all my bones shake.
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A spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body stood on end.
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It stopped, but I could not tell what it was. A form stood before my eyes, and I heard a hushed voice:
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“Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can even a strong man be more pure than his Maker?
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If God places no trust in his servants, if he charges his angels with error,
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how much more those who live in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, wo are crushed more readily than a moth!
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Between daun and dusk they are broken to pieces; unnoticed, they perish forever.
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Are not the cords of their tent pulled up, so that they die without wisdom?”
