² If someone ventures to have a word with you, will you grow impatient?
But who can refrain from speaking up?
³ You yourself have instructed many,
and you have strengthened weak hands.
⁴ Your words have raised up people who were stumbling,
and you have given support to buckling knees.
⁵ But now that this has happened to you, you grow impatient.
This strikes you and you are disturbed.
⁶ Shouldn’t your piety give you confidence?
Don’t your blameless ways give you reason to hope?
⁷ Now remember this:
Who has ever perished if he was innocent?
Where were the upright ever erased?
⁸ This is what I have observed:
Those who plow evil and sow trouble will reap the same.
⁹ By the breath of God they perish.
By the blast from his nostrils they come to an end.

¹⁰ The lion roars, and the fierce lion growls,
but the teeth of the young lion are broken.^[a]
11 The strong lion perishes from a lack of prey,
and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.

¹² A word was delivered to me secretly.
My ears caught a whisper of it.
¹³ In the middle of anxious thoughts arising from visions in the night,
at the time when deep sleep falls upon people,
¹⁴ terror and trembling came over me
and made all my bones tremble.
¹⁵ A spirit^[b] passed in front of my face.
The hair on my body stood on end.
¹⁶ A figure stood in front of me,
but I could not tell what it was.
A form stood before my eyes,
and I heard a quiet voice say,
¹⁷ “Can a person be righteous before God?
Can a man be pure before his Maker?”^[c]
18 If God does not trust his own servants,
if he charges his messengers with error,
¹⁹ how much more those who dwell in clay houses,
    whose foundations are in the dust,
    who are crushed more quickly than a moth!
²⁰ From dawn to dusk they are smashed to pieces.
They perish forever, and no one even notices.
²¹ Won’t the ropes that hold up their tents be pulled up,^[d]
so that they die without gaining wisdom?