1. Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said,
2. “Should the wise answer with windy knowledge, and should he fill his stomach with the east wind?
3. Should he argue in talk that is not profitable or in words with which he cannot do good?
4. “What is worse, you yourself are doing away with fear, and you are lessening meditation before God.
5. For your iniquity teaches your mouth, and you choose the tongue of the crafty.
6. Your mouth condemns you, and not I; and your lips testify against you.
7. “Were you born the firstborn of the human race? And were you brought forth before the hills?
8. Have you listened in God’s confidential discussion? And do you limit wisdom to yourself?
9. What do you know that we do not know? What do you understand that is not clear to us?
10. Both the gray-haired and the old are among us— those older than your father.
11. “Are the consolations of God too small for you, a word spoken gently with you?
12. Why does your heart carry you away? And why do your eyes flash,
13. that you turn your spirit against God, and you let such words go out of your mouth?
14. “What is a human being, that he can be clean, or that one born of a woman can be righteous?
15. Look, he does not trust his holy ones, and the heavens are not clean in his eyes.
16. How much less he who is abominable and corrupt, a man drinking wickedness like water.
17. “I will show you, listen to me; and what I have seen, I will tell—
18. what wise men have told, and they have not hidden that which is from their ancestors,
19. to whom alone the land was given, and no stranger passed through their midst.