Job 4 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

Then Eliphaz from Teman answered:

If someone ventured a word with you, would you find it too much to carry? And yet — who could hold his words in now?

Look — you have corrected so many people. You have put strength back into limp hands.

Your words have set stumbling people back on their feet. You have braced knees that were giving way.

But now it comes to you, and you cannot carry it. It touches you, and you come apart.

Isn't your fear of God the thing you lean on? Isn't your blameless road your hope?

Think back. Who ever perished while he was innocent? Where were straight-living people ever wiped out?

Here is what I have seen: the ones who plow harm and plant trouble bring in exactly that harvest.

One breath from God and they are gone. One gust of his anger and they are finished.

The lion roars, the wild lion cries out — and the teeth of the young lions are snapped off.

The old lion dies with nothing left to hunt, and the lioness's cubs are scattered.

A word came stealing in to me. My ear caught only a scrap of it.

In the restless thoughts that come out of night visions, when deep sleep has fallen on everyone,

Dread came over me, and shaking, and it set every bone in me rattling.

A breath slid past my face. The hair on my body stood up.

It stood still. I could not make out what it looked like — only a shape in front of my eyes. Then silence. Then a voice:

"Can a human being stand in the right in front of God? Can a man be clean in front of the one who made him?"

"Look — he puts no trust in his own servants. Even his messengers he charges with going wrong."

"How much more the ones who live in houses of mud, whose foundations are set in dust, who are crushed more easily than a moth."

"Between morning and evening they are broken to pieces. Nobody even notices, and they are gone for good."

"Isn't the tent rope pulled up out of them? They die, and never come to any wisdom."