Albert Barnes Commentary Job 6:26

"Do ye think to reprove words, Seeing that the speeches of one that is desperate are as wind?" — Job 6:26 (ASV)

Do you imagine to reprove words? - A considerable variety of interpretation has occurred in regard to this verse. Dr. Good, following Schultens, supposes that the word translated wind here רוּח rûach means sighs, or groans, and renders it,

Would you then take up words for reproof,
The mere venting of the words of despair?

But Rosenmuller has well remarked that the word never has this meaning. Noyes renders it,

Do you mean to censure words?
The words of a man in despair are but wind.

In this, Noyes has probably expressed the true sense. This explanation was proposed by Ludov. de Dieu and is adopted by Rosenmuller.

According to this, the sense is: “Do you think it reasonable to carp at mere words? Will you pass over weighty and important arguments and facts, and dwell merely upon the words that are extorted from a man in misery? Do you not know that one in a state of despair utters many expressions that ought not to be regarded as the result of his deliberate judgment? And will you spend your time dwelling on those words rather than on the main argument involved?”

This is probably the true sense of the verse; and if so, it is a complaint of Job that they were disposed to make him “an offender for a word” rather than to enter into the real merits of the case, and especially that they were not disposed to make allowances for the hasty expressions of a man almost in despair.