2“If someone ventures a word with you, will you be impatient?

But who can keep from speaking?

3Think how you have instructed many,

how you have strengthened feeble hands.

4Your words have supported those who stumbled;

you have strengthened faltering knees.

5But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged;

it strikes you, and you are dismayed.

6Should not your piety be your confidence

and your blameless ways your hope?

7“Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished?

Where were the upright ever destroyed?

8As I have observed, those who plow evil

and those who sow trouble reap it.

9At the breath of God they perish;

at the blast of his anger they are no more.

10The lions may roar and growl,

yet the teeth of the great lions are broken.

11The lion perishes for lack of prey,

and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.

12“A word was secretly brought to me,

my ears caught a whisper of it.

13Amid disquieting dreams in the night,

when deep sleep falls on people,

14fear and trembling seized me

and made all my bones shake.

15A spirit glided past my face,

and the hair on my body stood on end.

16It stopped,

but I could not tell what it was.

A form stood before my eyes,

and I heard a hushed voice:

17‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God?

Can even a strong man be more pure than his Maker?

18If God places no trust in his servants,

if he charges his angels with error,

19how much more those who live in houses of clay,

whose foundations are in the dust,

who are crushed more readily than a moth!

20Between dawn and dusk they are broken to pieces;

unnoticed, they perish forever.

21Are not the cords of their tent pulled up,

so that they die without wisdom?’