² Should anyone try to speak with you
when you are exhausted?
Yet who can keep from speaking?
³ Indeed, you have instructed many
and have strengthened^(A) weak hands.
⁴ Your words have steadied the one who was stumbling
and braced the knees that were buckling.^(B)
5 But now that this has happened to you,
you have become exhausted.
It strikes^(C) you, and you are dismayed.
⁶ Isn’t your piety your confidence,
and the integrity of your life^[a] your hope?^(D)
7 Consider: who has perished when he was innocent?
Where have the honest been destroyed?^(E)
8 In my experience, those who plow injustice
and those who sow trouble^(F) reap the same.^(G)
9 They perish at a single blast^(H) from God
and come to an end by the breath of His nostrils.^(I)
10 The lion may roar and the fierce lion^(J) growl,
but the fangs of young lions are broken.^(K)
11 The strong lion dies if it catches no prey,
and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.^(L)

¹² A word was brought to me in secret;
my ears caught a whisper of it.^(M)
13 Among unsettling thoughts from visions in the night,^(N)
when deep sleep^(O) descends on men,
¹⁴ fear and trembling came over me^(P)
and made all my bones shake.
¹⁵ A wind^[b] passed by me,
and I shuddered with fear.^[c]
16 A figure stood there,
but I could not recognize its appearance;
a form loomed before my eyes.
I heard a quiet voice:
¹⁷ “Can a person be more righteous than God,
or a man more pure than his Maker?”^(Q)
18 If God puts no trust in His servants
and He charges His angels with foolishness,^[d](R)
19 how much more those who dwell in clay houses,^(S)
whose foundation is in the dust,
who are crushed like a moth!
²⁰ They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk;
they perish forever while no one notices.^(T)
21 Are their tent cords not pulled up?
They die without wisdom.^(U)