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For sighing has become my daily food; my groans pour out like water.
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“If someone ventures a word with you, will you be impatient? But who can keep from speaking?
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Think how you have instructed many, how you have strengthened feeble hands.
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Your words have supported those who stumbled; you have strengthened faltering knees.
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But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged; it strikes you, and you are dismayed.
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Should not your piety be your confidence and your blameless ways your hope?
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As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it.
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The lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.
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“A word was secretly brought to me, my ears caught a whisper of it.
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Amid disquieting dreams in the night, when deep sleep falls on people,
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fear and trembling seized me and made all my bones shake.
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A spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body stood on end.
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It stopped, but I could not tell what it was. A form stood before my eyes, and I heard a hushed voice:
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‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can even a strong man be more pure than his Maker?
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If God places no trust in his servants, if he charges his angels with error,
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Are not the cords of their tent pulled up, so that they die without wisdom?’
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Resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple.
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I myself have seen a fool taking root, but suddenly his house was cursed.
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His children are far from safety, crushed in court without a defender.
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For hardship does not spring from the soil, nor does trouble sprout from the ground.
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Yet man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward.
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He provides rain for the earth; he sends water on the countryside.
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The lowly he sets on high, and those who mourn are lifted to safety.
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He thwarts the plans of the crafty, so that their hands achieve no success.
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He catches the wise in their craftiness, and the schemes of the wily are swept away.
