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4Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered: ²“If one ventures a word with you, will you be offended? But who can keep from speaking? ³See, you have instructed many; you have strengthened the weak hands. ⁴Your words have supported those who were stumbling, and you have made firm the feeble knees. ⁵But now it has come to you, and you are impatient; it touches you, and you are dismayed. ⁶Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope?

⁷“Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? ⁸As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same. ⁹By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of his anger they are consumed. ¹⁰The roar of the lion, the voice of the fierce lion, and the teeth of the young lions are broken. ¹¹The strong lion perishes for lack of prey, and the whelps of the lioness are scattered.

¹²“Now a word came stealing to me, my ear received the whisper of it. ¹³Amid thoughts from visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on mortals, ¹⁴dread came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones shake. ¹⁵A spirit glided past my face; the hair of my flesh bristled. ¹⁶It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance. A form was before my eyes; there was silence, then I heard a voice: ¹⁷‘Can mortals be righteous before God? Can human beings be pure before their Maker? ¹⁸Even in his servants he puts no trust, and his angels he charges with error; ¹⁹how much more those who live in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed like a moth. ²⁰Between morning and evening they are destroyed; they perish forever without any regarding it. ²¹Their tent-cord is plucked up within them, and they die devoid of wisdom.’

2You were dead through the trespasses and sins ²in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. ³All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.

⁴But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us ⁵even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— ⁶and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. ⁸For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— ⁹not the result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.