When Job's three friends heard about all this calamity that had happened to him, each of them came from his own country -- Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to come to show sympathy for him and to console him.

"Does not humanity have hard service on earth? Are not their days also like the days of a hired man?

He is wise in heart and mighty in strength -- who has resisted him and remained safe?

"But these things you have concealed in your heart; I know that this is with you:

"Indeed, my eyes have seen all this, my ears have heard and understood it.

If a man dies, will he live again? All the days of my hard service I will wait until my release comes.

Why has your heart carried you away, and why do your eyes flash,

"I have heard many things like these before. What miserable comforters are you all!

My days have passed, my plans are shattered, even the desires of my heart.

whom I will see for myself, and whom my own eyes will behold, and not another. My heart grows faint within me.

Accept instruction from his mouth and store up his words in your heart.

Indeed, God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me.

Destruction and Death say, 'With our ears we have heard a rumor about where it can be found.'

"As soon as the ear heard these things, it blessed me, and when the eye saw them, it bore witness to me,

the blessing of the dying man descended on me, and I made the widow's heart rejoice;

My heart is in turmoil unceasingly; the days of my affliction confront me.

If my footsteps have strayed from the way, if my heart has gone after my eyes, or if anything has defiled my hands,

If my heart has been enticed by a woman, and I have lain in wait at my neighbor's door,

whose heart did not bless me as he warmed himself with the fleece of my sheep,

so that my heart was secretly enticed, and my hand threw them a kiss from my mouth,

if I have covered my transgressions as men do, by hiding iniquity in my heart,

My words come from the uprightness of my heart, and my lips will utter knowledge sincerely.

"Indeed, you have said in my hearing (I heard the sound of the words!):

If God were to set his heart on it, and gather in his spirit and his breath,

The godless at heart nourish anger, they do not cry out even when he binds them.

At this also my heart pounds and leaps from its place.

After that a voice roars; he thunders with an exalted voice, and he does not hold back his lightning bolts when his voice is heard.

Therefore people fear him, for he does not regard all the wise in heart."

when the waters become hard like stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen solid?

Who has put wisdom in the heart, or has imparted understanding to the mind?

Its heart is hard as rock, hard as a lower millstone.

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye has seen you.