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1.
Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:
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2.
"If someone ventures a word with you, will you be impatient? But who can keep from speaking?
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3.
Think how you have instructed many, how you have strengthened feeble hands.
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4.
Your words have supported those who stumbled; you have strengthened faltering knees.
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5.
But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged; it strikes you, and you are dismayed.
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6.
Should not your piety be your confidence and your blameless ways your hope?
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7.
"Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed?
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8.
As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it.
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9.
At the breath of God they are destroyed; at the blast of his anger they perish.
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10.
The lions may roar and growl, yet the teeth of the great lions are broken.
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11.
The lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.
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12.
"A word was secretly brought to me, my ears caught a whisper of it.
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13.
Amid disquieting dreams in the night, when deep sleep falls on men,
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14.
fear and trembling seized me and made all my bones shake.
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15.
A spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body stood on end.
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16.
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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17.
'Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can a man be more pure than his Maker?
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18.
If God places no trust in his servants, if he charges his angels with error,
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19.
how much more those who live in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who are crushed more readily than a moth!
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20.
Between dawn and dusk they are broken to pieces; unnoticed, they perish forever.
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21.
Are not the cords of their tent pulled up, so that they die without wisdom?'
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