6:26 Do you intend to criticize mere words,
and treat 1 the words of a despairing man as wind?
8:2 “How long will you speak these things, 2
seeing 3 that the words of your mouth
are like a great 4 wind? 5
21:18 How often 6 are they like straw before the wind,
and like chaff swept away 7 by a whirlwind?
27:21 The east wind carries him away, and he is gone;
it sweeps him out of his place.
30:22 You pick me up on the wind and make me ride on it; 8
you toss me about 9 in the storm. 10
1 tn This, in the context, is probably the meaning, although the Hebrew simply has the line after the first half of the verse read: “and as/to wind the words of a despairing man.” The line could be translated “and the words of a despairing man, [which are] as wind.” But this translation follows the same approach as RSV, NIV, and NAB, which take the idiom of the verb (“think, imagine”) with the preposition on “wind” to mean “reckon as wind” – “and treat the words of a despairing man as wind.”
2 sn “These things” refers to all of Job’s speech, the general drift of which seems to Bildad to question the justice of God.
3 tn The second colon of the verse simply says “and a strong wind the words of your mouth.” The simplest way to treat this is to make it an independent nominal sentence: “the words of your mouth are a strong wind.” Some have made it parallel to the first by apposition, understanding “how long” to do double duty. The line beginning with the ו (vav) can also be subordinated as a circumstantial clause, as here.
4 tn The word כַּבִּיר (kabbir, “great”) implies both abundance and greatness. Here the word modifies “wind”; the point of the analogy is that Job’s words are full of sound but without solid content.
5 tn See, however, G. R. Driver’s translation, “the breath of one who is mighty are the words of your mouth” (“Hebrew Studies,” JRAS 1948: 170).
6 tn To retain the sense that the wicked do not suffer as others, this verse must either be taken as a question or a continuation of the question in v. 17.
7 tn The verb used actually means “rob.” It is appropriate to the image of a whirlwind suddenly taking away the wisp of straw.
8 sn Here Job changes the metaphor again, to the driving storm. God has sent his storms, and Job is blown away.
9 tn The verb means “to melt.” The imagery would suggest softening the ground with the showers (see Ps 65:10 [11]). The translation “toss…about” comes from the Arabic cognate that is used for the surging of the sea.
10 tc The Qere is תּוּשִׁיָּה (tushiyyah, “counsel”), which makes no sense here. The Kethib is a variant orthography for תְּשֻׁאָה (tÿshu’ah, “storm”).