Rhyming Job, Chapter 4

Rhyming Job, Chapter 4

Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:

“If someone ventures just a word with you,
would you, impatiently, their words despise?
But who can stop, their speech to you, renewed?
Think how, on your instruction, men rely,

“the hands you’ve strengthened, feeble, too, and weak,
your words supported those with stumbling feet;
you’ve strengthened them, those ones with falt’ring knees.
But now, comes trouble, you, discouraged, feel;
it strikes you, and you are dismayed. Is not
the confidence you have, your fear of God,
your blameless ways, your hope should never stop?

“Consider now: which innocents you know
have ever perished? When, they e’er destroyed,
the upright? I’ve observed, who plow and sow
both evil, trouble, reap them, their reward.
At it, the breath of God, they’re perishing;
destroyed, his anger’s blast, from up above.
The lions’ roaring noises, growling-ly,
the lion’s teeth are now just broken nubs.
For lack of prey, the lion, hungrily,
will die, and scattered, lioness’s cubs.

“A word in secret, what was brought to me,
my ears caught whisper of it. In the night
amid dreams that disquieted, when sleep,
most deep, on people generally will lie.
Both fear and trembling seized me, made them shake:
my bones. A spirit glided past my face,
my body’s hair, all of it, stood on end.
It stopped, but it, I couldn’t understand.
A form stood there before me, ‘fore my eyes,
its voice did not, above a hush, arise:

“‘Can any mortal’s righteousness exceed
God’s righteousness; can that, his purity,
a man who’s strong, be greater than our God’s?
If he, no trust in servants, fallible,
their errors, to his angels, billable,
how much more so will he, to mortal men,
whose houses, made of clay, where they extend,
are their foundations laid down in the dust,
more so than moths, they readily are crushed!
To pieces, broken, dawn until the dusk;

“’Unnoticed, they forever perish, die.
Are not their tent-cords pulled so very high,
so, while they’re lacking wisdom, lose their lives?’”