“Is there no end to windy words? Or what provokes you that you answer?
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?
- BSB Is there no end to your long-winded speeches? What provokes you to continue testifying?
- NKJV Shall words of wind have an end? 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 reprove words, since the speeches of one who is desperate are as wind?
- Job 15:2“Should a wise man answer with vain knowledge, and fill himself with the east wind?
- Titus 2:8and soundness of speech that can’t be condemned; that he who opposes you may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say about us.
- Matt 22:46No one was able to answer him a word, neither did any man dare ask him any more questions from that day forward.
- Job 20:3I have heard the reproof which puts me to shame. The spirit of my understanding answers me.
- Job 8:2“How long will you speak these things? Shall the words of your mouth be a mighty wind?
- Titus 1:11whose mouths must be stopped; men who overthrow whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for dishonest gain’s sake.
- Job 32:3–6Also his wrath was kindled against his three friends, because they had found no answer, and yet had condemned Job.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Commentaries & study tools
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
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.