Jobchapter 19
29 verses · KJVJob book hub →
Key verse
For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
It stands in scene C of the chapter, verses 23 to 29.
The chapter
Chapter summary
Job's reply, and the summit of the book. 'How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words?' Ten times they have reproached him. Brethren are far off, acquaintance estranged, his breath strange to his wife. 'My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth' (19:20). Have pity upon me, O ye my friends. He wishes his words graven with an iron pen in the rock for ever. And gets his wish: 'I know that my Redeemer liveth, and at last he will stand up upon the earth… without my flesh shall I see God' (19:25-26), read by the church toward the risen Christ.
Context
Poetry · Unknown · Job overview
Where the chapter sits
Job 19 falls in Dialogue: three cycles (chapters 3–27). Job's opening complaint (3); three rounds with Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar; the friends' rigid retribution theology; the third cycle breaks: Zophar does not speak again. The dialogue exhausts itself as argument.
I know that my redeemer liveth. The book's hinge: faith reaching past the friends to a coming redeemer.
Before it: Prose prologue: heavenly court, chapters 1–2. After it: Hymn to wisdom, chapters 28.
The whole shape of Job→The world behind this chapter
Job 19The history
The first half is a catalogue of social death, listed by relationship. Brothers put far away; acquaintances estranged; kinsfolk failed; the guests of his house counting him a stranger; his servant not answering when called; his breath strange to his wife; young children despising him; his close friends abhorring him. In a society where a man was his household and his clan, this is what total ruin actually meant.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
Then he asks for his words to be permanently recorded: printed in a book, or better, graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever. That describes real monumental practice, letters cut into stone with an iron chisel and the grooves filled with molten lead so they stood out and lasted. Rulers across the ancient Near East recorded their claims that way, and Job wants his testimony to have the same permanence as a king's inscription.
The word he uses next is a legal one every hearer knew: goel, the redeemer. The goel was the nearest male relative, and his duties were specific, buy back land the family had lost, buy a relative out of slavery, marry a childless widow to preserve the line, and pursue the killer of a murdered kinsman. Job has just finished saying every human kinsman has abandoned him. So he names a different one: 'I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.'
The following verse is famously hard in the Hebrew, and translations differ over whether Job expects to see God in his flesh or after his flesh is destroyed. What is not in doubt is the direction: he expects to see God himself, with his own eyes, and not as a stranger.
What it meant to them
This is the summit of Job's faith and it comes from the bottom of his ruin. He does not withdraw a single complaint. He simply asserts that there is a living kinsman-redeemer who will stand up on the dust and settle his case, and that Job will be there to see it.
For the first hearers this was the answer to the arbiter he asked for in chapter 9 and the witness in chapter 16, the same hand reaching, now with a name from family law. He closes by warning the friends to be afraid of the sword themselves, because there is a judgment.
Sources cited
- Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Book of Job
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
- John E. Hartley, The Book of Job
A. Job: God Hath Overthrown Me and Fenced Up My Way
1. (vv. 1-5)
a.Then Job answered: Ten times have ye reproached me is a round number of completeness rather than a tally, as Gill notes, and it opens the fifth of Job's replies with the friends' cruelty itself now part of his case. His answer to their magnifying is that if he has erred, mine error remaineth with myself: an undiscovered private fault would be God's business and not theirs. Henry observes that the friends have made themselves strange to the man they came to comfort, which is the failure of chapter 2:13's better silence.
Job 19:2, 2 voicesWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Job 19:2
“How long, &c.--retorting Bildad's words (Job 18:2). Admitting the punishment to be deserved, is it kind thus ever to be harping on this to the sufferer?”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 19:2
"I see you will magnify yourselves against me, notwithstanding all I have said in my own justification." Those that speak too much seldom think they have said enough; and, when the mouth is opened in passion, the ear is shut to reason.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 19:3, 2 voices
Job 19:3
“Lo, these ten times ye confound me. On enumerating the successive times of the speeches of Job's friends, we learn that as yet they had spoken but five times. But for this reason, that he had five times heard rebukes from them, and five times himself replied to their rebukes, he says that he had been ten times confounded; because both herein, viz. that he had been causelessly reproached, he suffered deeply, and in this, that he uttered words of instruction to those that gave no ear, he underwent confusion.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIVpatristic
Job 19:3
“These ten times - Many times; the word “ten” being used as we often say, “ten a dozen” or “twenty,” to denote many; see Gen 31:7, “And your father hath changed my wages “ten times.” Lev 26:26, “and when I have broken your staff of bread, “ten women” shall bake your bread, in one oven;” compare Num 14:22; Neh 4:”
Job 19:4, 2 voices
Job 19:4
"And if I—let us suppose—had done things that should not have been done, even if I had been in such a condition, was it not necessary just the same that you felt ashamed while seeing my afflictions, disease, worms and loss of goods? But you approach me without commiserating with me and without feeling any sympathy for my adversities."
Origen of Alexandria· written before 253· FRAGMENTS ON JOB 13.15, 29patristic
Job 19:4
“And be it indeed that I have erred - Suppose indeed that I have been mistaken in any thing, that in the simplicity of my heart I have gone astray, and that this matter remains with myself, (for most certainly there is no public stain on my life), you must grant that this error, whatsoever it is, has hurt no person except myself. Why then do ye treat me as a person whose life has been a general blot, and whose example must be a public curse?”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 19:5, 1 voice
Job 19:5
“If, indeed, ye will magnify yourselves against me - This is connected with the next verse. The sense is, “all these calamities came from God. He has brought them upon me in a sudden and mysterious manner. In these circumstances you ought to have pity upon me; Job 19:”
2. (vv. 6-9)
a.compassed me with his net: Job answers Bildad's doctrine that the wicked man is taken in a net by his own feet (18:8) by naming the net's true owner: God hath overthrown me, and hath compassed me with his net. The images that follow are of a siege and a degradation, the fenced-up way, darkness set in the path, the stripped glory and the crown taken from his head. Barnes notes that Job's error here is honest and profound at once: he reads his suffering as God's hostility because he cannot see the court of chapters 1 and 2, and the reader always can.
Job 19:6, 2 voices
Job 19:6
“Know now at least that God hath afflicted me with no just judgment. O, how hard does the voice of the righteous man sound, suffering under the infliction of the rod! Which same, however, not pride, but grief gave vent to! Now he is not righteous, who gives up righteousness under sorrow; and blessed Job, because he had a meek spirit, did not sin even by a hard word.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIVpatristic
Job 19:6
“Know now that God hath overthrown me - The matter is between him and me, and he has not commissioned you to add reproaches to his chastisements. And hath compassed me with his net - There may be an allusion here to the different modes of hunting which have been already referred to in the preceding chapter.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 19:7, 2 voices
Job 19:7
"I will cry out, and there is nowhere judgment; I still contend." This is as if Job had said, "I cried out like an athlete in the stadium, but my judgment is nowhere there. Indeed, I still fight. But if I do not bring my fight to a close, I will not get my crown." We actually say these things lest we accuse God of the fact that Job suffered such misfortunes and there was judgment for him nowhere.
Origen of Alexandria· written before 253· FRAGMENTS ON JOB 13.15, 29patristic
Job 19:7
“Behold, I cry out of wrong - Margin, or “violence.” The Hebrew word (חמס châmâs) means properly violence. The violence referred to is that which was brought upon him by God. It is, indeed, harsh language; but it is not quite sure that he means to complain of God for doing him injustice. God had dealt with him in a severe or violent manner, is the meaning, and he had cried unto him for relief, but had cried in vain. No judgment - No justice.”
Job 19:8, 2 voices
Job 19:8
“He hath fenced up my way, that I cannot pass: and He hath set darkness in my paths. He saw his 'way fenced up' with strokes, when anxiously desiring to pass into a state of security, he was not able to escape the scourges, and whereas he saw himself smitten, and yet did not find in himself a life worthy of such smiting, as it were 'in the paths' of the heart he met with 'the darkness' of his own ignorance, in that he could not fathom the cause wherefore he was so scourged.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIVpatristic
Job 19:8
“He hath fenced up my way - This may allude to the mode of hunting the elephant, described at the conclusion of the preceding chapter; or to the operations of an invading army. See under Job 19:11 (note).”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 19:9, 2 voices
Job 19:9
“He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION That all this suits the person of the blessed man set in the midst of tribulation, there can be no doubt; but, since the words of the historical account are plain, they do not require explaining after the letter, therefore they have to be traced out in their mystical senses. Thus he says, He hath stripped me of my glory. For the glory of each individual is his righteousness.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIVpatristic
Job 19:9
“He hath stripped me of my glory - Everything which I had that contributed to my respectability and honor, he has taken away. My property, my health, my family, the esteem of my friend - all is gone. And taken the crown from my head - The crown is an emblem of honor and dignity - and Job says that God had removed all that contributed to his - and Job says that God had removed all that contributed to his former dignity; compare Pro 4:9; Pro 17:6; Eze 16:12; Lam 5:16.”
3. (vv. 10-12)
a.mine hope hath he removed like a tree: The uprooted tree answers Job's own earlier image at 14:7, where a tree cut down had hope that a man lacked; now even the tree's hope is taken from him. His troops come together turns one afflicted man's tent into a city under siege by armies, which Delitzsch reads as the language of the Chaldean and Sabean raids of chapter 1 turned into a figure for God's whole campaign. The disproportion is the point the verse states without softening: encamped round about my tabernacle, a war against a tent.
Job 19:10, 1 voice
Job 19:10
“Mine hope hath he removed like a tree - There is no more hope of my restoration to affluence, authority, and respect, than there is that a tree shall grow and flourish, whose roots are extracted from the earth. I am pulled up by the roots, withered, and gone.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 19:11, 2 voices
Job 19:11
“He hath also kindled his wrath - He is angry. Wrath in the Scriptures is usually represented as burning or inflamed - because like fire it destroys everything before it. And he counteth me unto him as one of his enemies - He treats me as he would an enemy. The same complaint he elsewhere makes; see Job 13:24; perhaps also in Job 16:9. We are not to understand Job here as admitting that “he” was an enemy of God.”
Job 19:11
“Job's present apprehension was that God counted him as one of his enemies; and yet, at the same time, God loved him, and gloried in him, as his faithful friend. It is a gross mistake, but a very common one, to think that whom God afflicts he treats as his enemies; whereas, on the contrary, as many as he loves he rebukes and chastens; it is the discipline of his sons.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 19:12, 2 voices
Job 19:12
“His troops - The calamities which he had sent, and which are here represented as “armies” or “soldiers” to accomplish his work. It is not probable that he refers here to the bands of the Chaldeans and the Sabeans, that had robbed him of his property, but to the calamities that had come upon him, “as if” they were bands of robbers.”
Job 19:12
“God's troops encamped around his tabernacle, as soldiers lay siege to a strong city, cutting off all provisions from being brought into it and battering it continually; thus was Job's tabernacle besieged. Time was when God's hosts encamped round him for safety: Hast thou not made a hedge about him?”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
B. Job: My Kinsfolk Have Failed: Have Pity, O Ye My Friends
1. (vv. 13-16)
a.put my brethren far from me: The estrangement catalogue descends by rank through a patriarchal household: brethren, acquaintance, kinsfolk, familiar friends, house guests, maids, and the servant who no longer answers though his master intreats him. Henry marks the inversion of the last pair, a lord begging his own servant and being refused, as the depth of the humiliation. Gill notes that every relation the restoration of chapter 42:11 will name again is lost here first, so the catalogue is the measure of what God will later give back.
Job 19:13, 2 voices
Job 19:13
“He hath put my brethren - This is a new source of afflication that he had not adverted to before, that God had caused all his children to be estranged from him - a calamity which he regarded as the crown of all his woes. The word rendered “my brethren” (אחי 'âchāy) means means properly “my brothers” - but whether he means literally his brothers, or whether he designs it to be taken in a figuratie sense as denoting his intimate friends, or those of the same rank in life or calling, it is impossible now to determine.”
Job 19:13
“Nay, his inward friends, the men of his secret, whom he was most intimate with and laid in his bosom, not only forgot him, but abhorred him, kept as far off from him as they could, because he was poor and could not entertain them as he used to do, and because he was sore and a loathsome spectacle.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 19:14, 1 voice
Job 19:14
“My kinsfolk have failed - My neighbors (קרובי qârôbāy), those who were near to me. It may refer to “nearness” of affinity, friendship, or residence. The essential idea is that of “nearness” - whether by blood, affection, or vicinity. In Psa 38:11, it denotes near friends. And my familiar friends - Those who knew me - מידעי myudā‛ay. The allusion is to those who were “intimately” acquainted with him, or who were his bosom friends.”
Job 19:15, 1 voice
Job 19:15
“They that dwell in mine house - The trials came to his very dwelling, and produced a sad estrangement there. The word used here גרי gārēy from גוּר gûr means properly those who “sojourn” in a house for a little time. It may refer to guests, strangers, servants, clients, or tenants. The essential idea is, that they were not “permanent” residents, though for a time they were inmates of the family. Jerome renders the place, “Inquilini domus meoe - the tenants of my house.” The Septuagint, Γείτονες οἰχιάς Geitones oikias - neighbors.”
Job 19:16, 2 voices
Job 19:16
“I called my servant, and he gave me no answer. For what was the Jewish people but a 'servant,' which never obeyed the Lord with the love of a son, but the fear of a slave? Contrariwise it is said to us by Paul, For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again; but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIVpatristic
Job 19:16
“I called my servant - He lost all respect for me, and paid me no attention. I entreated him - I ceased to expect “obedience,” and tried to see what “persuasion” would do. I ceased to be master in my own house.”
2. (vv. 17-19)
a.strange to my wife: The catalogue reaches its innermost ring: his breath is strange to his wife, young children despise him when he rises, and all my inward friends abhorred me. The readings on the children's sake of mine own body divide, whether Job pleads by the memory of his dead children or by the sons of his own mother, and Barnes and Gill set out both without deciding. The three friends sitting in front of him are inside the sentence about inward friends turned against him, which is the charge of verse 2 restated as grief.
Job 19:17, 2 voices
Job 19:17
“My breath is strange to my wife - Schultens renders this, “my breath is loathsome to my wife,” and so also Noyes.”
Job 19:17
“Some read it, "Though I lamented, or bemoaned myself, for the children," that is, "for the death of the children of my own body," an affliction in which she was equally concerned with him.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 19:18, 2 voices
Job 19:18
“The foolish too despised me. The wise falling away from faith in the truth, there is an addition rightly made concerning 'fools' as well; in that when the Pharisees and the Lawyers despised the Lord, the rabble of the people too followed the example of their incredulousness, which herein, that it saw Him a man, slighted the announcements of the Redeemer of the world.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIVpatristic
Job 19:18
“Yea, young children - Margin, or “the wicked.” This difference between the text and the margin arises from the ambiguity of the original word - עוילים ‛ăvı̂ylı̂ym. The word עויל ‛ăvı̂yl (whence our word “evil”) means sometimes the wicked, or the ungodly, as in Job 16:11. It may also mean a child, or suckling, (from עוּל ‛ûl - to give milk, to suckle, 1Sa 7:7-10; Gen 22:13: Ps. 77:71; Isa 40:11; compare Isa 49:15; Isa 65:20,) and is doubtless used in this sense here.”
Job 19:19, 2 voices
Job 19:19
“All my inward friends - Margin, “the men of my secret.” The meaning is those, who were admitted to the intimacy of friendship or who were permitted to be acquainted with his secret thoughts, purposes, and plans. The word uses here (סוד sôd) denotes properly “a couch, cushions, pillow,” on which one reclines; then a “divan,” a circle of persons sitting together for consultation or conversation; and hence, it refers to those who are sitting together in intimate counsel, (see Job 15:8, note; Job 29:4, note) and then familiar conversation, intimacy.”
Job 19:19
“So uncertain is the friendship of men; but, if God be our friend, he will not fail us in a time of need. But let none that pretend either to humanity or Christianity ever use their friends as Job's friends used him: adversity is the proof of friendship.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
3. (vv. 20-22)
a.the skin of my teeth: I am escaped with the skin of my teeth is the birthplace of the proverb, and the commentators differ over what the figure holds: escape with nothing at all, or the bare gums the disease has left, and Clarke and Delitzsch set out both. The doubled cry have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends asks from men what he believes God has withheld, for the hand of God hath touched me. Why do ye persecute me as God charges the friends with joining the prosecution instead of the defense, an office the book's last chapter will reverse when Job prays for them.
Job 19:20, 2 voices
Job 19:20
“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.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 19:20
“Skin - Immediately, the fat and flesh next to the skin being consumed. As - As closely as it doth to these remainders of flesh which are left in my inward parts.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Job 19:21, 2 voices
Job 19:21
“The noble Job in his harsh adversity cried out in blame not misery. That is to say, 'You're meant to be merciful not unjustly reproach me! Instead you assail me and overwhelm a man with whose sufferings you ought to show sympathy for friendship's sake.”
Basil of Caesarea· written before 379· Commentary (church-history corpus)patristic
Job 19:21
“Have pity on me - A tender, pathetic cry for sympathy. “God has afflicted me, and stripped me of all my comforts, and I am left a poor, distressed, forsaken man. I make my appeal to you, my friends, and entreat you to have pity; to sympathize with me, and to sustain me by the words of consolation.” One would have supposed that these words would have gone to the heart, and that we should hear no more of their bitter reproofs. But far otherwise was the fact.”
Job 19:22, 2 voices
Job 19:22
“Why do ye persecute me as God - Are not the afflictions which God sends enough? Do ye not see that I have as much as I can bear? When the papists were burning Dr. Taylor at Oxford, while wrapped in the flames, one of the true sons of the Church took a stick out of the faggots, and threw it at his head, and split open his face. To whom he calmly said, Man, why this wrong? Do not I suffer enough?”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 19:22
“As God - As if you had the same infinite knowledge which God hath, whereby you can search my heart and know my hypocrisy, and the same sovereign authority to say and do what you please with me. Not satisfied - Are like wolves or lions that are not contented with devouring the flesh of their prey, but also break their bones.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
C. Job: I Know That My Redeemer Liveth
1. (vv. 23-24)
a.printed in a book!: Job wishes his protest made permanent in three rising degrees: written, inscribed in a book, and graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever. Clarke notes that printed is the translators' word from their own age and the Hebrew asks for engraving, the lead run into rock-cut letters after the manner of ancient inscriptions. The wish was granted beyond its asking, as Henry observes: the words were written in the book the reader is holding, and have outlasted every rock.
Job 19:23, 2 voices
Job 19:23
“Oh that my words were now written! - Margin, as in Hebrew, “Who will give;” a common mode of expressing desire among the Hebrews. This expression of desire introduces one of the most important passages in the book of Job. It is the language of a man who felt that injustice was done by his friends, and that he was not likely to have justice done him by that generation.”
Job 19:23
“Despairing of justice from his friends in his lifetime, he wishes his words could be preserved imperishably to posterity, attesting his hope of vindication at the resurrection. printed--not our modern printing, but engraven.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 19:24, 1 voice
Job 19:24
“Iron pen and lead - Some suppose that the meaning of this place is this: the iron pen is the chisel by which the letters were to be deeply cut in the stone or rock; and the lead was melted into those cavities in order to preserve the engraving distinct. But this is not so natural a supposition as what is stated above; that Job refers to the different kinds of writing or perpetuating public events, used in his time: and the quotations from Pliny and Pausanias confirm the opinion already expressed.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2. (v. 25)
a.my redeemer liveth: This is the first occurrence of the word redeemer in the canon's order, and the Hebrew is the goel, the kinsman with the right to buy back a relative's land and person (Lev 25:25) and to stand for his blood: the word Ruth's story builds on is here first, claimed by a man in ruins about God. It is the summit of a ladder the speeches have been climbing, the daysman wished for at 9:33, the witness in heaven of 16:19, and now a living redeemer who shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, the Hebrew saying at the last, upon the dust. Gregory and the older writers read the goel as Christ the one mediator, and that reading is theirs by name; the verse's own claim, that Job's vindicator lives and will stand on his dust, is text.
Job 19:25, 3 voices
Job 19:25
“For I know that my Redeemer liveth. LITERAL INTERPRETATION For he who does not say, 'Creator,' but 'Redeemer,' expressly tells of Him, Who after He created all things, appeared Incarnate amongst us, that He might redeem us from a state of bondage, and by His Passion set us free from death everlasting; and mark with what sure faith he makes himself secure in the power of His Divine Nature, of Whom it is said by Paul, For though He was crucified through weakness, yet He liveth by the power of God.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIVpatristic
Job 19:25
“For I know that my Redeemer liveth - There are few passages in the Bible which have excited more attention than this, or in respect to which the opinions of expositors have been more divided. The importance of the passage Job 19:25-27 has contributed much to the anxiety to understand its meaning - since, if it refers to the Messiah, it is one of the most valuable of all the testimonials now remaining of the early faith on that subject.”
Job 19:25
“Latter day - At the day of the general resurrection and judgment, which, as those holy patriarchs well knew and firmly believed, was to be at the end of the world. The earth - The place upon which Christ shall appear and stand at the last day. Hebrew. upon the dust; in which his saints and members lie or sleep, whom he will raise out of it.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
3. (vv. 26-27)
a.yet in my flesh: The Hebrew of this verse is among the hardest in the book and the margin is honest about it: in my flesh shall I see God can also be rendered from or without my flesh, and the readings divide with the words. Henry, Gill and most of the older bench read a resurrection hope, seeing God in the body after the skin's destruction; Delitzsch renders without my flesh and hears a vision of God from beyond the body's ruin. What no reading removes is the certainty and the personal claim: whom I shall see FOR MYSELF, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another, a longing so strong that my reins be consumed within me.
Job 19:26, 4 voices
Job 19:26
“And I shall be again encompassed with my skin. But see, I hear of the resurrection, but it is the effect of the resurrection that I am searching out. For I believe that I shall rise again, but I wish that I might hear what kind of person; since it is a thing I ought to know, whether I shall rise again perhaps in some other subtle or ethereal body, or in that body wherein I shall die. But if I shall rise again in an ethereal body, it will no longer be myself, who rise again.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIVpatristic
Job 19:26
“And though after my skin worms destroy this body - My skin, which is now almost all that remains of my former self, except the bones; see Job 19:20. They destroy this - not body. נקפו זאת nikkephu zoth, they - diseases and affliction, destroy This wretched composition of misery and corruption.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 19:26
“Rather, though after my skin (is no more) this (body) is destroyed ("body" being omitted, because it was so wasted as not to deserve the name), yet from my flesh (from my renewed body, as the starting-point of vision, So 2:9, "looking out from the windows") "shall I see God." Next clause [Job 19:27] proves bodily vision is meant, for it specifies "mine eyes" [ROSENMULLER, 2d ed.].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 19:26
“God - The same whom he called his Redeemer, ver. 25, who having taken flesh, and appearing in his flesh or body with and for Job upon the earth, might well be seen with his bodily eyes. Nor is this understood of a simple seeing of him; but of that glorious and beatifying vision of God, which is promised to all God's people.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Job 19:27, 4 voices
Job 19:27
“Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another. For if, as certain votaries of false opinions believe, after the resurrection there shall be no palpable body, but the subtle quality of an invisible body shall be called the flesh, though there be no substance of flesh, then surely he that dies is one person, and he that rises again is another. But blessed Job destroys this assertion for them by a truthtelling voice, in that he says, Whom I shall see for myself; and mine eyes shall behold, and not another.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIVpatristic
Job 19:27
“Whom I shall see for myself - It will not come to be by mere report. I shall not merely hear of the decision of God in my favor, but I shall myself behold him. He will at length come forth, and I shall be permitted to see him, and shall have the delightful assurance that he settles this controversy in my favor, and declares that I am his friend. Job was thus permitted to see God Job 42:5, and hear his voice in his favor.”
Job 19:27
“My eyes shall behold him, and not another. First, "He, and not another for him, shall be seen, not a type or figure of him, but he himself." Glorified saints are perfectly sure that they are not imposed upon; it is no deceptio visus--illusion of the senses.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 19:27
“Let us therefore glorify God with our bodies because there is such a glory designed for them. [2.] Job and God shall come together again: In my flesh shall I see God, that is, the glorified Redeemer, who is God.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
4. (vv. 28-29)
a.the root of the matter: Job closes by warning the prosecutors: if the root of the matter is found in me, then the persecution itself will come under review, and wrath bringeth the punishments of the sword. That ye may know there is a judgment turns the friends' favorite doctrine back upon them, since the judgment they preached at Job will weigh their words about God as well. The book keeps the warning: at 42:7 the wrath of the Lord is kindled against Eliphaz and his two friends for the very speeches this chapter answers, as Henry notes.
Job 19:28, 3 voices
Job 19:28
“But ye should say - Or, Then ye shall say. Why persecute we him - Or, as Mr. Good, How did we persecute him! Alas! we are now convinced that we did wrong. Seeing the root of the matter - A pure practice, and a sound hope, resting on the solid ground of sound faith, received from God himself. Instead of בי bi, in Me, בי bo, in Him, is the reading of more than one hundred of Kennicott’s and De Rossi’s MSS., and in several of the versions. Seeing the root of the matter is found in Him.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 19:28
“Rather, "ye will then (when the Vindicator cometh) say, Why," &c. root . . . in me--The root of pious integrity, which was the matter at issue, whether it could be in one so afflicted, is found in me.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 19:28
“A living, quickening, commanding, principle of grace in the heart, is the root of the matter, as necessary to our religion as the root to the tree, to which it owes both its fixedness and its fruitfulness. Love to God and our brethren, faith in Christ, hatred of sin--these are the root of the matter; other things are but leaves in comparison with these.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 19:29, 3 voices
Job 19:29
“Be ye afraid of the sword - Of the sword of justice, of the wrath of God. In taking such views, and using such language, you ought to dread the vengeance of God, for he will punish the guilty. For wrath bringeth the punishments of the sword - The word “bringeth” is supplied by the translators, and as it seems to me improperly. The idea is, that wrath or anger such as they had manifested, was proper for punishment; that such malice as they had shown was a crime that God would not suffer to escape unpunished.”
Job 19:29
“Sword - Of some considerable judgment to be inflicted on you which is called the sword, as Deut. xxxii, 41, and elsewhere. That - This admonition I give you, that you may know it in time, and prevent it. A judgment - God sees and observes, and will judge all your words and actions.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Job 19:29
“God himself often takes vengeance for it, and those that showed no mercy shall find no mercy. (2.) If they repent not, that will be an earnest of worse. By these you may know there is a judgment, not only a present government, but a future judgment, in which hard speeches must be accounted for.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Threads running through this chapter
- The daysman, the witness, and the redeemerPattern, vv. 25 to 27
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Job 19. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on 11 works. Open for the list.
This page draws on Adam Clarke; Albert Barnes; Basil of Caesarea, Commentary (church-history corpus); Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Book of Job; Gregory the Dialogist, Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIV; Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871); John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765); Matthew Henry and Origen of Alexandria, FRAGMENTS ON JOB 13.15, 29.
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