² “Will you be patient and let me say a word?
    For who could keep from speaking out?

³ “In the past you have encouraged many people;
    you have strengthened those who were weak.
⁴ Your words have supported those who were falling;
    you encouraged those with shaky knees.
⁵ But now when trouble strikes, you lose heart.
    You are terrified when it touches you.
⁶ Doesn’t your reverence for God give you confidence?
    Doesn’t your life of integrity give you hope?

⁷ “Stop and think! Do the innocent die?
    When have the upright been destroyed?
⁸ My experience shows that those who plant trouble
    and cultivate evil will harvest the same.
⁹ A breath from God destroys them.
    They vanish in a blast of his anger.
¹⁰ The lion roars and the wildcat snarls,
    but the teeth of strong lions will be broken.
¹¹ The fierce lion will starve for lack of prey,
    and the cubs of the lioness will be scattered.

¹² “This truth was given to me in secret,
    as though whispered in my ear.
¹³ It came to me in a disturbing vision at night,
    when people are in a deep sleep.
¹⁴ Fear gripped me,
    and my bones trembled.
¹⁵ A spirit^[a] swept past my face,
    and my hair stood on end.^[b]
16 The spirit stopped, but I couldn’t see its shape.
    There was a form before my eyes.
In the silence I heard a voice say,
¹⁷ ‘Can a mortal be innocent before God?
    Can anyone be pure before the Creator?’

¹⁸ “If God does not trust his own angels
    and has charged his messengers with foolishness,
¹⁹ how much less will he trust people made of clay!
    They are made of dust, crushed as easily as a moth.
²⁰ They are alive in the morning but dead by evening,
    gone forever without a trace.
²¹ Their tent-cords are pulled and the tent collapses,
    and they die in ignorance.