My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
Loss and disease have battered Job, and his three visitors suspect him of hidden sin. He ends a long account of his misery with a picture of his own body — words that became one of the best-known sayings in English, though few now know what he meant.
Where the verse falls in Job's reply
This is the closing note of a section, not a stray complaint. One writer reads the whole chapter as a six-part answer to Bildad, with verse 20 at the end of the third part. He also notes what rises out of the misery only a few verses later:
Samuel RidoutHowever deeply Bildad's cruel words hurt him, Job's reply shows not the slightest sense of the guilt laid at his door… And it is wonderful to see this crushed spirit rise from the dust in those words of faith and hope, "I know that my Redeemer lives."… (1) Reproach (Job 19:1-6). (2) God's hand (verses 7-11). (3) The scorn of man (verses 12-20). (4) The plea for pity (verses 21-24). (5) The triumph of faith (verses 25-27). (6) The close (verses 28, 29).
Another writer notes what happened to those closing words afterwards:
F. B. HoleHe was an object of contempt, and everyone left him. Even his servants and his wife would have nothing to do with him. The words he used to close this account of his sorrows in verse 20 describe his physical state, and they have become a common saying among us.
What the words describe
The first line describes a body wasted to the bone. The second is stranger, and commentators explain it in more than one way. One writer applies it to a body eaten away until almost nothing is left:
Samuel RidoutHis bones stick to his skin, and so far he has only just escaped death, as by the skin of his teeth. That is, everything is eaten away except the thin covering around the roots of his teeth. It is a dreadful picture of an awful disease. It is deeply sad when we remember that he could not turn to God for comfort.
Another explains the phrase from the boils themselves, and warns against the popular sense:
Truth & TestimonyPerhaps the expression which is most familiar to us is from chapter nineteen, verse twenty, where Job says, "I have escaped by the skin of my teeth." People sometimes use the verse for a "close shave." But what Job really meant was that he was covered with boils from head to foot. The only place with no boils was his teeth, because there was no skin there.
A third reads it as nearness to death. Job's body was wasted away, "and he feels he has barely escaped death, as by the skin of his teeth, — a metaphor indicating the finest margin" (Leslie M. Grant).
Every loss traced to one hand
Job does not blame bad luck. He names God as the cause of everything, right down to the ruin of his body:
William KellyIt was He who threw him down and caught him in a net he could not escape. It was He who refused to listen to his cry… It was He who made his circle of friends bitter, and his home life too. His brothers were taken away, his friends turned into strangers, his relatives failed him, his closest companions forgot him… All his close friends hated him, and those he loved turned against him. He himself was wasted away, escaped with nothing but the skin of his teeth.
But one of Job's conclusions was wrong. On the charge that God's anger burned against him, the same writer points to what Job still had to learn:
William Kelly"He has stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head." He felt all this very deeply. What right has any believer to a crown now?… The day when we will be crowned is the day when we have nothing but what is of Christ, with every bit of the old nature completely gone. That is where Job had much to learn. "He has also kindled His wrath against me" — there he was wrong.
The proverb turned into a warning
Another writer uses Job's phrase for a narrow escape of a different kind: a life saved, but spent on nothing:
J. T. MawsonFire will test every man's work. Some are building with wood, hay, and straw, and their folly must be plain. Such material will perish in the flames: "if anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire." The man in this passage has a soul that is safe through the precious blood of Jesus, but he has wasted his precious life on things that perish… he escapes by the skin of his teeth. His soul saved, but all his work lost.
Summary
- Position. Verse 20 ends Job's account of human scorn (verses 12-20). The plea for pity and the triumph of faith come next.
- Body. The first line pictures a body wasted to the bone. Commentators differ on the second: teeth stripped to their roots, skin left only there, or the narrowest escape from death.
- Bitterness. The disease is not the worst of it. Job is left by family, servants and wife, and cannot turn to God for comfort.
- Cause. Job traces his ruin to God's hand. But he reads that hand as anger, and there he was wrong.
- Warning. The proverb outlives Job. A believer can be saved and still see his life's work burned up — escaping by the skin of his teeth.