Job 19: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Job answers his three friends. He tells them to stop crushing him with words, says God has wronged him and shut him in, and lists how family, servants, and friends have all turned away while his body wastes. He asks his friends for pity, wishes his words could be carved in rock to last, and says he knows his defender lives and that he will see God. He closes by warning the friends that if they keep hounding him, they should fear judgment themselves.

Claim by Claim

1. 19:1
   • Job answered.
   • Job spoke.
2. 19:2
   • Job asked his friends how long they would torment his soul.
   • Job asked how long they would crush him with words.
3. 19:3
   • Job said they had reproached him ten times.
   • Job said they were not ashamed.
   • Job said they wrong him / treat him as a stranger (the verb is uncertain in the original).
4. 19:4
   • Job granted the possibility that he has truly gone astray.
   • Job said that if he has erred, his error lodges with himself alone.
5. 19:5
   • Job posed the case that they would magnify themselves against him.
   • Job posed the case that they would argue his disgrace against him.
6. 19:6
   • Job told them to know that God has bent him crooked / wronged him.
   • Job said God has closed his net around him.
7. 19:7
   • Job said that when he cries out 'Violence!' he is not answered.
   • Job said that when he calls for help there is no justice.
8. 19:8
   • Job said God has walled up his path so he cannot pass.
   • Job said God sets darkness on his ways.
9. 19:9
   • Job said God has stripped his honor from him.
   • Job said God has removed the crown from his head.
10. 19:10
    • Job said God breaks him down on every side.
    • Job said he is gone.
    • Job said God has uprooted his hope like a tree.
11. 19:11
    • Job said God's anger has burned against him.
    • Job said God counts him as one of his adversaries.
12. 19:12
    • Job said God's troops come together.
    • Job said they build up their road / siege ramp against him.
    • Job said they encamp around his tent.
13. 19:13
    • Job said God has put his brothers far from him.
    • Job said his acquaintances have become estranged from him.
14. 19:14
    • Job said his kinsmen have ceased / failed him.
    • Job said his close friends have forgotten him.
15. 19:15
    • Job said the guests of his house and his maidservants count him a stranger.
    • Job said he has become a foreigner in their eyes.
16. 19:16
    • Job said he called his servant and the servant gave no answer.
    • Job said he entreated the servant with his own mouth.
17. 19:17
    • Job said his breath is strange and repulsive to his wife.
    • Job said that toward the children of his own body he is loathsome, or that he pleaded with them (the original word is uncertain).
18. 19:18
    • Job said even young children despise him.
    • Job said that when he rises up, they speak against him.
19. 19:19
    • Job said all the men of his intimate circle abhor him.
    • Job said those he loved have turned against him.
20. 19:20
    • Job said his bone clings to his skin and to his flesh.
    • Job said he has escaped with the skin of his teeth.
21. 19:21
    • Job asked his friends to have pity on him, repeating the plea.
    • Job said the hand of God has touched him.
22. 19:22
    • Job asked why they pursue him as God does.
    • Job asked why they are not satisfied with his flesh.
23. 19:23
    • Job wished that his words were written down.
    • Job wished that his words were inscribed in a book.
24. 19:24
    • Job wished his words were engraved with an iron stylus and lead.
    • Job wished his words were cut in rock forever.
25. 19:25
    • Job said he knows that his redeemer lives.
    • Job said that at the last his redeemer will stand upon the dust of the earth.
26. 19:26
    • Job said that after his skin is destroyed: the King James supplies worms destroying his body: he will still see God.
    • Job said he will see God from his flesh, which may mean from within his flesh or apart from it.
27. 19:27
    • Job said he himself will see God.
    • Job said his own eyes will behold God.
    • Job said it will not be a stranger who sees.
    • Job said his inward parts are consumed within him.
28. 19:28
    • Job said they would ask why they persecute him.
    • Job said the root of the matter is found in him.
29. 19:29
    • Job told them to be afraid of the sword.
    • Job said wrath brings punishments of the sword.
    • Job said this is so that they may know there is a judgment.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

19:1

Job is answering Bildad, one of three friends who came to comfort him after he lost his children, his wealth and his health, and who have spent the argument so far insisting that suffering like his only happens to people who deserve it.

19:2

"Torment my soul" in the older wording: in Hebrew the word translated "soul" means the whole living person (a life, a self), not an immaterial part of someone. Job is saying they are wearing him out, not attacking something inside him.

19:3

"Ten times" is a round number meaning "over and over," the way we say "a hundred times." Job is not counting speeches. The King James "ye make yourselves strange to me" translates a verb whose sense is disputed: it may mean "you treat me as a stranger" or "you wrong me shamelessly."

19:5

This is courtroom language. To "plead against me my reproach" means to bring his public disgrace forward as evidence, arguing that the state he is in proves he is guilty. Much of Job is shaped like a legal case, with charges, defenses and demands for a verdict.

19:6

The net is a hunter's net, thrown or spread to trap birds and game. It is a standard image in Hebrew poetry for being caught with no way out, and it names God as the hunter.

19:7

"I am being treated with violence" translates a single Hebrew word, ḥamas, that worked as a public cry for help against a crime, roughly like shouting "Murder!" in a street and expecting neighbors and elders to come running and hold a hearing. Job is saying he raised the legal alarm and nobody came.

19:9

Job was not a king. Stripping off a robe and lifting off a crown are images for the loss of public standing and respect that a wealthy, honored man carried in his community.

19:12

Attacking armies built a ramp of packed earth against a city wall so troops could climb over it. Job's point is the mismatch: the full siege machinery of a nation is being brought against one man's tent.

19:13

"Brothers" here covers blood brothers and the wider circle of male relatives; in this culture that circle carried a duty to stand by a man in trouble. Their absence is not just loneliness but abandonment by the people obliged to help.

19:15

"The guests in my house" are longer-term residents, dependents and protected houseguests living under Job's roof and eating at his expense. A host's guests owed him honor, and servants owed him obedience, so being counted a stranger by his own household inverts the normal order completely.

19:17

The Hebrew phrase behind "the children born from my own body" is ambiguous. It can mean Job's own children, or, since the word is literally "the sons of my womb," it can mean the sons of the womb that bore him: that is, his brothers. Translators divide on which is meant.

19:18

In this culture the young owed visible respect to their elders, standing when they approached and staying silent while they spoke. Small children openly jeering at a senior man is a measure of how completely Job's standing has collapsed.

19:20

The first line describes extreme emaciation: nothing left but skin over bone. The second line is a proverb whose exact sense is uncertain, since teeth have no skin: it seems to mean escaping with nothing, or by the narrowest possible margin. This verse is where the English expression "by the skin of my teeth" comes from.

19:21

"The hand of God" is a standard Hebrew way of speaking about God's power in action; a hand that "touches" or "strikes" means a blow has landed. Job is telling his friends he has already been hit hard enough.

19:22

"Eat someone's flesh" was an idiom for tearing a person apart with accusations and slander, the way a predator or scavenger works over a carcass. Job is comparing his friends' talk to animals feeding on him.

19:23

A "book" here means a scroll. The King James word "printed" is from 1611, long before it meant machine printing; it means inscribed or written down.

19:24

This describes a known method for permanent inscriptions: the letters were cut into rock with an iron chisel or stylus, then molten lead was poured into the grooves so the writing stood out white against dark stone and would survive weathering. It was how a record was made to outlast the person who made it.

19:25

The word behind "defender" (King James "redeemer") is go'el, a legal term for a man's nearest able relative. The go'el had specific duties: to buy back family land that had been sold off, to buy a relative out of debt-slavery, to pursue the killer of a murdered kinsman, and to take up a relative's case when he could not defend himself. It is a family-law word, not a religious title. "Stand upon the earth" uses the verb for rising to one's feet to speak in a legal hearing; the noun can mean the earth, the ground, or the dust of the grave, and translators disagree about which is meant here.

19:26

This verse is one of the hardest in the book. The Hebrew preposition can mean either "from within my flesh" (that is, while still embodied) or "from outside my flesh" (that is, apart from a body), and the first line's verb has no stated subject, so it may be "after my skin has been destroyed" or "after they have destroyed my skin." The rendering picks one reading; the original leaves it open.

19:27

The King James "my reins" means the kidneys. Hebrew located strong feeling in the internal organs, kidneys and bowels, the way English locates it in the heart. The line means Job is exhausted by longing, though some read it as literal physical wasting.

19:28

"The root of the matter" means the cause or origin of the trouble, the friends' claim that the fault lies in Job himself. Ancient copies differ here between "in me" and "in him," which is why translations of this verse vary.

19:29

"The sword" stands for violent punishment generally, whether by an enemy, a court, or God. Job is warning his friends that the same standard of judgment they are applying to him can fall on them.