Job 19:20

20 My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.

Job 19:20 Meaning and Commentary

Job 19:20

My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh
Or, "as to my flesh" F15, as Mr. Broughton and others render the words; as his bones used to stick to his flesh, and were covered with it, now his flesh being consumed and wasted away with his disease, they stuck to his skin, and were seen through it; he was reduced to skin and bone, and was a mere skeleton, what with the force of his bodily disorder, and the grief of his mind through the treatment he met with from God and men, see ( Lamentations 4:8 ) ;

and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth;
meaning not, as some understand it, his lips, which covered his teeth; for those cannot be properly called the skin of them; rather the fine polish of the teeth, which fortifies them against the hurt and damage they would receive by what is ate and drank; though it seems best to interpret it of the skin of the gums, in which the teeth are set; and the sense is, that Job had escaped with his life, but not with a whole skin, his skin was broken all over him, with the sores and ulcers upon him, see ( Job 7:5 ) ; only the skin of his teeth was preserved, and so Mr. Broughton renders it, "I am whole only in the skin of my teeth"; everywhere else his skin was broken; so the Targum,

``I am left in the skin of my teeth.''

Some have thought that Satan, when he smote Job from head to feet with ulcers, spared his mouth, lips, and teeth, the instruments of speech, that he might therewith curse God, which was the thing he aimed at, and proposed to bring him to, by getting a grant from God to afflict him in the manner he did.


FOOTNOTES:

F15 (yrvbbw yrweb) "cuti meae ut carni meae", Tremellius, in one edition of his version.

Job 19:20 In-Context

18 Yea, young children despised me; I arose, and they spake against me.
19 All my inward friends abhorred me: and they whom I loved are turned against me.
20 My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
21 Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me.
22 Why do ye persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?
The King James Version is in the public domain.