Job 19:20 - Exposition

My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh . Here the third source of Job's misery is brought forward—his painful and incurable disease. This has brought him to such a pitch of emaciation that his bones seem to adhere to the tightened skin, and the scanty and shrunken muscles, that cover them (comp. Job 33:21 and Lamentations 4:8 ). Such emaciation of the general frame is quite compatible with the unsightly swelling of certain parts of the body which characterizes elephantiasis . And I am escaped with the skin of my teeth . The expression is, no doubt, proverbial, and signifies "barely escaped;" but its origin is obscure.