Is there no end to your long-winded speeches? What provokes you to continue testifying?
Parallel translations
- WEB Shall vain words have an end? Or what provokes you that you answer?
- KJV Shall vain words have an end? or what emboldeneth thee that thou answerest?
- NKJV Shall words of wind have an end? Or what provokes you that you answer?
- NASB “Is there no end to windy words? Or what provokes you that you answer?
- NLT Won’t you ever stop blowing hot air? What makes you keep on talking?
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Job asks whether their empty words will ever stop and what compels them to keep answering. He challenges the endlessness of their fault-finding.
Overview
Turning the friends' own complaint back on them, Job questions what provokes their relentless speeches of wind. He finds their words vain and their persistence inexplicable. The reproach exposes how easily counselors keep talking past a sufferer's real need, a contrast to the patient, listening love that Scripture commends.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 8
- Job 6:26Do you intend to correct my words, and treat as wind my cry of despair?
- Job 15:2“Does a wise man answer with empty counsel or fill his belly with the hot east wind?
- Titus 2:8and wholesome speech that is above reproach, so that anyone who opposes us will be ashamed, having nothing bad to say about us.
- Matt 22:46No one was able to answer a word, and from that day on no one dared to question Him any further.
- Job 20:3I have heard a rebuke that insults me, and my understanding prompts a reply.
- Job 8:2“How long will you go on saying such things? The words of your mouth are a blustering wind.
- Titus 1:11who must be silenced. For the sake of dishonorable gain, they undermine entire households and teach things they should not.
- Job 32:3–6and he burned with anger against Job’s three friends because they had failed to refute Job, and yet had condemned him.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
Job's cry for a mediator who can lay his hand on both God and man, and his confidence that 'my Redeemer lives' and will stand on the earth, reaches forward to Jesus the living Redeemer.
How Job 16:3 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.