Do you intend to correct my words, and treat as wind my cry of despair?
Parallel translations
- WEB Do you intend to reprove words, since the speeches of one who is desperate are as wind?
- KJV Do ye imagine to reprove words, and the speeches of one that is desperate, which are as wind?
- NKJV Do you intend to rebuke my words, And the speeches of a desperate one, which are as wind?
- NASB “Do you intend to rebuke my words, When the words of one in despair belong to the wind?
- NLT Do you think your words are convincing when you disregard my cry of desperation?
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 if they mean to correct mere words, treating the speech of a desperate man as wind. He protests that they seize on his anguished words rather than help him.
Overview
Job objects that his friends are nitpicking the words of a man in despair, as though such words were weighty doctrine rather than the gusts of pain. He pleads for mercy toward speech wrung out by suffering. This calls for gentleness with the grieving, the same tenderness Christ shows in not breaking the bruised reed or quenching the smoldering wick of a hurting soul.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 16
- Job 8:2“How long will you go on saying such things? The words of your mouth are a blustering wind.
- Matt 12:37For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”
- Eph 4:14Then we will no longer be infants, tossed about by the waves and carried around by every wind of teaching and by the clever cunning of men in their deceitful scheming.
- Job 10:1“I loathe my own life; I will express my complaint and speak in the bitterness of my soul.
- Job 42:3You asked, ‘Who is this who conceals My counsel without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.
- Job 4:3–4Surely you have instructed many, and have strengthened their feeble hands.
- Job 2:10“You speak as a foolish woman speaks,” he told her. “Should we accept from God only good and not adversity?” In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.
- Job 34:3–9For the ear tests words as the mouth tastes food.
- Hos 12:1Ephraim chases the wind and pursues the east wind all day long; he multiplies lies and violence; he makes a covenant with Assyria and sends olive oil to Egypt.
- Job 6:4For the arrows of the Almighty have pierced me; my spirit drinks in their poison; the terrors of God are arrayed against me.
- Job 40:5I have spoken once, but I have no answer—twice, but I have nothing to add.”
- Job 3:3–26“May the day of my birth perish, and the night it was said, ‘A boy is conceived.’
- Job 40:8Would you really annul My justice? Would you condemn Me to justify yourself?
- Job 42:7After the LORD had spoken these words to Job, He said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is kindled against you and your two friends. For you have not spoken about Me accurately, as My servant Job has.
- Job 38:2“Who is this who obscures My counsel by words without knowledge?
- Job 6:9that God would be willing to crush me, to unleash His hand and cut me off!
Themes, concepts, people & topics
Resources, by level
Commentaries & study tools
Free animated overview and word-study videos for this book.
Sermons and teaching on this passage from across YouTube.
Clear, readable, conservative exposition — the best free place to start on any passage.
Matthew Henry, Barnes, Gill, the Pulpit Commentary, Ellicott, Cambridge, and more — stacked on one page for this exact verse.
The beloved Puritan exposition of this whole book — warm, devotional, and verse by verse (free, CCEL).
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 6:26 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.