What Does Job 19:20 Mean?
My bone clings to my skin and to my flesh, and I slip free with the skin of my teeth.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.THE KEY
The same verse holds two extremes: bone is stuck fast to flesh, while the speaker escapes by the thinnest possible margin.
THE MEANING
The body stands at its most exposed edge: bone presses against skin and flesh, and escape is measured as no more than the skin on the teeth. There is no triumph in the wording; survival is pictured as nearly stripped bare.
THE ROOT
דָּבְקָה
dāveqāh
GROWS FROM
דבק
To cling, stick, or remain joined.
“clings” in this verse is dāveqāh. The verb links this bodily adhesion to every other kind of holding fast. The same root can describe bone pressed against flesh or two people joined as one.
ALSO GROWS
yidbaq: He will cleave or cling.
יִדְבַּק
This is the form used in Genesis 2:24 for a man cleaving to his wife, revealing the same root beneath Job’s bodily image.
dāveqū: They clung or held fast.
דָּבְקוּ
This plural form shows the root’s sense of sustained attachment, rather than a brief touch.
וָאֶתְמַלְּטָה
vaʾetmalləṭāh
GROWS FROM
מלט
To escape or slip away.
“slip free” in this verse is vaʾetmalləṭāh. The word carries the sense of getting away, but the verse gives that escape almost no room: it is measured by the skin of the teeth. The root lets the image hold both the act of escape and its painfully narrow margin.
ALSO GROWS
mālaṭ: To escape or slip away.
מָלַט
This is the root verb behind the speaker’s claim that he has escaped.
himmālēṭ: Escape; get away.
הִמָּלֵט
The same root appears as a direct command to escape in Genesis 19:17, keeping the emphasis on getting out of danger.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names the edge of suffering through what is nearly gone and what still remains.
I count all my bones; they gaze and stare at me.Their face is darker than blackness, and they are not recognized in the streets. Their skin clings to their bones; it dries, it is like wood.Pursued, but not left behind; thrown down, but not perishing.THE THREAD
Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother, and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.The Hebrew verb behind “cleaveth” in Job shares the root דבק with “cleave” in Genesis. The root names being joined fast: here bone adheres to skin and flesh in bodily extremity; in Genesis, that joining becomes one flesh.
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