¹⁴ God does speak, sometimes one way, sometimes another,
but people do not pay attention to it.
¹⁵ In a dream, in a vision in the night,
when people are falling into a deep sleep,
while they slumber on their beds,
¹⁶ he whispers a revelation into people’s ears,
and he confirms his warnings to them,
¹⁷ in order to turn a man from his course of action
and to suppress a person’s pride.
¹⁸ He spares his life from the pit.
He spares his life from crossing the stream of death.^[a]
19 Or a person may be disciplined on his bed by pain
and by continual agony in his bones,
²⁰ so that his life makes food disgusting to him,
and he has no appetite for delicious food.
²¹ His flesh wastes away and disappears,
and his bones, which were hidden, now stick out.
²² Then his soul draws near to destruction,
and his life to those who bring death.