Job 19:26

26 And after my body has decayed, yet in my body I will see God!

Job 19:26 Meaning and Commentary

Job 19:26

And though after my skin [worms] destroy this [body]
Meaning not, that after his skin was wholly consumed now, which was almost gone, there being scarce any left but the skin of his teeth, ( Job 19:20 ) ; the worms in his ulcers would consume what was left of his body, which scarce deserved the name of a body, and therefore he points to it, and calls it "this", without saying what it was; but that when he should be entirely stripped of his skin in the grave, then rottenness and worms would strip him also of all the rest of his flesh and his bones; by which he expresses the utter consumption of his body by death, and after it in the grave; and nevertheless, though so it would be, he was assured of his resurrection from the dead:

yet in my flesh shall I see God:
he believed, that though he should die and moulder into dust in the grave, yet he should rise again, and that in true flesh, not in an aerial celestial body, but in a true body, consisting of flesh, blood, and bones, which spirits have not, and in the same flesh or body he then had, his own flesh and body, and not another's; and so with his fleshly or corporeal eyes see God, even his living Redeemer, in human nature; who, as he would stand upon the earth in that nature, in the fulness of time, and obtain redemption for him, so he would in the latter day appear again, raise him from the dead, and take him to himself, to behold his glory to all eternity: or "out of my flesh" F6, out of my fleshly eyes; from thence and with those shall I behold God manifest in the flesh, my incarnate God; and if Job was one of those saints that rose when Christ did, as some say F7, he saw him in the flesh and with his fleshly eyes.


FOOTNOTES:

F6 (yrvbm) "e carne mea", Tigurine version, Mercerus, Piscator, Cocceius, Schmidt, Schultens; so Gussetius, p. 446.
F7 "Suidas in voce" (iwb) , & Sept. in ch. xlii. 17.

Job 19:26 In-Context

24 carved with an iron chisel and filled with lead, engraved forever in the rock.
25 “But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and he will stand upon the earth at last.
26 And after my body has decayed, yet in my body I will see God!
27 I will see him for myself. Yes, I will see him with my own eyes. I am overwhelmed at the thought!
28 “How dare you go on persecuting me, saying, ‘It’s his own fault’?

Footnotes 1

  • [a]. Or without my body I will see God. The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain.
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