Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 19:20
My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
20. The desertion and loathing of mankind is universal, and to this is added his exhausted state from disease.
My bone cleaveth to my skin ] The words describe his emaciated condition, cf. Lam 4:8; Psa 102:5, My bones cleave to my skin (marg. flesh); Psa 22:17, I may tell (count) all my bones.
escaped with the skin of my teeth ] i. e. with nothing else. The “skin of my teeth” is usually held to mean the gums, which Job represents as still sound, otherwise he would be unable to speak; the last stage of his disease has not yet been reached. In Job 19:17 however he referred to his fetid breath, and in such distempers the mouth and throat are usually rapidly affected. Besides, such a sense is prosaic and flat. The phrase is probably proverbial; the meaning of Job being that he is wholly fallen a prey to his disease, cf. Amo 3:12.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh – The meaning of this probably is, my skin and flesh are dried up so that the bone seems adhere to the skin, and so tht the form of the bone becomes visible. It is designed to denote a state of great emaciation, and describes an effect which we often see.
And I am escaped with the skin of my teeth – A very difficult expression, and which has greatly perplexed commentators, and on whose meaning they are by no means agreed. Dr. Good renders it, and in the skin of my teeth am I dissolved; but what that means is as difficult of explanation as the original. Noyes, and I have scarcely escaped with the skin of my teeth. Herde, (as translated by Marsh,) and scarcely the skin in my teeth have I brought away as a spoil. He says that the figure is taken from the prey which wild beasts carry in their teeth; his skin is his poor and wretched body, which alone he had escaped with. His friends are represented as carnivorous animals which gnaw upon his skin, upon the poor remnant of life; but the Hebrew will not bear this construction. Poole observes, quaintly enough, that it means, I am scarcely sound and whole and free from sores in any part of my skin, except that of my jaws, which holdeth and covereth the roots of my teeth. This being, as divers observe, the devils policy, to leave his mouth untouched, that be might more freely express his mind, and vent his blasphemies against God, which he supposed sharp pain would force him to do. Schultens has mentioned four different interpretations given to the phrase, none of which seems to be perfectly satisfactory. They are the following:
(1) That it means that the skin about the teeth alone was preserved, or the gums and the lips, so that he had the power of speaking, though every other part was wasted away, and this exposition is given, accompanied with the suggestion that his faculty of speech was preserved entire by Satan, in order that he might be able to utter the language of complaint and blasphemy against God.
(2) That he was emaciated and exhausted completely, except the skin about his teeth, that is, his lips, and that by them he was kept alive; that if it were not for them he could not breathe, but must soon expire.
(3) That the teeth themselves had fallen out by the force of disease, and that nothing was left but the gums. This opinion Schultens himself adopts. The image, be says, is taken from pugilists, whose teeth are knocked out by each other; and the meaning he supposes to be, that Job had been treated by his disease in the same manner. So violent had it been that he had lost all his teeth and nothing was left but his gums.
(4) A fourth opinion is, that the reference is to the enamel of the teeth, and that the meaning is, that such was the force and extent of his afflictions that all his teeth became hollow and were decayed, leaving only the enamel. It is difficult to determine the true sense amidst a multitude of learned conjectures; but probably the most simple and easy interpretation is the best. It may mean that he was almost consumed. Disease had preyed upon his frame until he was wasted away. Nothing was left but his lips, or his gums; he was just able to speak, and that was all. So Jerome renders it, delicta sunt tantummodo labia circa dentes meos. Luther renders it, und kann meine Zahne mit der Haut nicht bedecken – and I cannot cover my teeth with the skin; that is, with the lips.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Job 19:20
And I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
A narrow escape
Job had it hard. What with boils, and bereavements, and bankruptcy, and a foolish wife, he wished he was dead. His flesh was gone, and his bones were dry. His teeth wasted away until nothing but the enamel seemed left. He cries out, I am escaped with the skin of my teeth. There has been some difference of opinion about this passage. St. Jerome, and Schultens, and Doctors Good and Peele and Barnes, have all tried their forceps on Jobs teeth. You deny my interpretation, and say, What did Job know about the enamel of the teeth? He knew everything about it. Dental surgery is almost as old as the earth. The mummies of Egypt, thousands of years old, are found today with gold filling in their teeth. Ovid, and Horace, and Solomon, and Moses wrote about these important factors of the body. To other provoking complaints, Job, I think, had added an exasperating toothache; and putting his hand against the inflamed face, he says, I am escaped with the skin of my teeth. A very narrow escape, you say, for Jobs body and soul; but there are thousands of men who make just as narrow escape for their soul. There was a time when the partition between them and ruin was no thicker than a tooths enamel; but as Job finally escaped, so have they. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 20. My bone cleaveth to my skin.] My flesh is entirely wasted away, and nothing but skin and bone left.
I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.] I have had the most narrow escape. If I still live, it is a thing to be wondered at, my sufferings and privations have been so great. To escape with the skin of the teeth seems to have been a proverbial expression, signifying great difficulty. I had as narrow an escape from death, as the thickness of the enamel on the teeth. I was within a hair’s breadth of destruction; see on Job 19:11.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
My bone, i.e. my bones; the singular collectively put for the plural, as Job 2:5; Pro 15:30.
Cleaveth to my skin, to wit, immediately, the fat and flesh next to the skin being consumed. The sense is, I am worn to skin and bone: see the same phrase Psa 102:5.
And to my flesh; or, as (the particle and being often so used, as hath been observed before) to my flesh, i.e. either as formerly it clave to my flesh, or as near and as closely as it doth to these remainders of flesh which are left in my inward parts.
I am escaped with the skin of my teeth; I am scarce sound and whole and free from sores in any part of my skin, except that of my jaws, which holdeth and covereth the roots of my teeth. This being, as divers observe, the devils policy, to leave his mouth untouched, that he might more freely express his mind, and vent his blasphemies against God, which he supposed sharp pain would force him to do, and which he knew would be of pernicious consequence not only to Job, but to others also.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
20. Extreme meagerness. The boneseemed to stick in the skin, being seen through it, owing to theflesh drying up and falling away from the bone. The Margin,“as to my flesh,” makes this sense clearer. The EnglishVersion, however, expresses the same: “And to myflesh,” namely, which has fallen away from the bone, instead offirmly covering it.
skin of my teethproverbial.I have escaped with bare life; I am whole only with theskin of my teeth; that is, my gums alone are whole, the rest ofthe skin of my body is broken with sores (Job 7:5;Psa 102:5). Satan left Job hisspeech, in hope that he might therewith curse God.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh,…. Or, “as to my flesh” o, 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 La 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.
o “cuti meae ut carni meae”, Tremellius, in one edition of his version.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
4. He utters a plea for pity. (Job. 19:20-22)
TEXT 19:2022
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 Mends;
For the hand of God hath touched me.
22 Why do ye persecute me as God,
And are not satisfied with my flesh?
COMMENT 19:2022
Job. 19:20Though the general meaning is obvious, the verse has failed to yield up its grammatical secrets to those whose very lives have been spent in studying this language. The essence isI have nothing but my bones and the skin of my teeth (Brown, Driver, Briggs understand this as gums), and I am nothing.[211] Mere survival is the only claim he can make. The verse has a certain proverbial tone about it. At least it is possible that the meaning is that suggested by Popemy flesh rots on my bones, my teeth drop from my gums. The LXX suggest that the translators had a different Hebrew text before them under my skin my flesh is corrupted; my bones are held in (my) teeth.
[211] D. R. Blumenthal, Yetus Testamentum, 1966, pp. 497ff.
Job. 19:21The repetition of have pity on me is a powerful rhetorical device. The hand of God has stricken me (same verb used in Isa. 53:4).
Job. 19:22His friends are here accused of imitating God by their ceaseless hounding of Job. They are inhuman. Job is their prey. The idiom means and will not stop calumniating me. How appropriate for our age which is preoccupied with the humanization of man, without the redemptive activity of God in the world.[212]
[212] Most contemporary views of redemption are politico-economic in nature, egs. Neo-Marxism, Liberation Theology, Eastern Meditationtechniques of all varieties, etc.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(20) My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh in one indistinguishable mass, and I have escaped with the skin of my teeth, because the teeth have no skin, or, as others explain, because the teeth have fallen out. This expression, which is by no means clear in the context, has passed into a proverb expressive of a very narrow escapea meaning which can only by inference be obtained from this place in Job.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
20. The skin of my teeth In the last stages of the disease (elephantiasis) the tongue and the gums are attacked, and the mouth filled with ulcers so as to render continuous speech impossible. This terrible infliction he has (he means to say) thus far escaped. The Germans call the gums zahn-fleisch, tooth-flesh, which, indeed, is the rendering Hitzig gives. An old English physician (Smith) in his “Portrait of Old Age,” (p. 69,) had hit upon the true sense of this passage. “There are two parts of the teeth: the basis and the radix, that is, the part which eminently appears white above the gums; this is that part which is within the gums, and stands fixed in the mandibles. Now, by Job’s skin or covering of his teeth, it is apparent he meant the gums which cover the roots of the teeth.” Wordsworth unnecessarily regards it “as a proverbial paradox.” Job is now in extremis. In the preceding chapter, while yet he could, he chanted his requiem. The next stage of his disease means death. There is but the skin of his teeth between him and sure destruction.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job 19:20. My bone cleaveth to my skin, &c. My bones pierce through my skin and my flesh, and my teeth slip out from my gums. Heath and Le Clerc. Chappelow renders the clause, I am escaped with a torn skin, or, with my skin all over wrinkles, to denote his being quite emaciated. Schultens says, that to escape with the skin of the teeth, seems to be a proverbial expression for those who lie beaten and covered with wounds from head to foot; and their mouth being broken with blows, half dead, they are scarcely able to breathe.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Job 19:20 My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
Ver. 20. My bone cleaveth to my skin ] My skin is a bag of bones. I am become a mere skeleton, and may well cry out, O my leanness, my leanness! So bare I am grown, that little appeareth in me but skin and bones, Isa 24:16 . My bone cleaveth to my skin as to my flesh (so it may be read), that is, as once it did in my flesh, when I was well lined within. Now, alas! I lie under a miserable marasmus; and should therefore be pitied, as being a just object of your commiseration, Ossa sub incurvis apparent arida lumbis.
And I am escaped with the skin of my teeth
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
the skin of my teeth = the gums. See rendering below.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
bone: Job 30:30, Job 33:19-22, Psa 22:14-17, Psa 32:3, Psa 32:4, Psa 38:3, Psa 102:3, Psa 102:5, Lam 4:8
and to: or, as
and I am: Job 2:4-6, Job 7:5, Lam 3:4, Lam 5:10
Reciprocal: Job 2:5 – put forth Job 14:22 – his flesh Job 20:11 – bones Job 21:5 – be astonished Job 30:18 – By the great Job 33:21 – His flesh Psa 109:24 – my flesh
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Job 19:20. My bone Or, bones, the singular collectively being put for the plural: cleaveth to my skin Namely, immediately, the flesh next to the skin being consumed. The sense is, Afflictions have so wasted me, that I am little more than skin and bone. And to my flesh Or, As to my flesh; as closely as it does to those remainders of my flesh, which are left in my inward parts. And I am escaped with the skin of my teeth I am scarcely free from sores in any part of my skin, except that of my gums, which holdeth and covereth the roots of my teeth. Schultens says, that it seems to be a proverbial expression, for those who lie beaten and covered with wounds from head to foot, and whose mouths also are broken with blows, so that, being half dead, they are scarcely able to breathe. Heath and Le Clerc render the verse, My bones pierce through my skin, and my flesh and my teeth slip out from my gums.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
19:20 My bone {k} cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
(k) Besides these great losses and most cruel unkindness, he was touched in his own person as follows.