Job 2:4

4. Skin for skin Among the conflicting interpretations of this difficult verse are, first, that a man will readily give the skin, that is, the life of others for his own skin or life. Just as by “life for life,” in Exodus 21:23, is meant the giving of one life for another, Job would gladly yield up every thing property, friends, relatives even, (so Satan meant to say,) if so be that his own precious life might be preserved. Such sacrifice, Satan insinuates, is no proof of godly fear; it is no more than what any one else would do under like circumstances. Touch his own life, and we shall see how he will curse thee. The second theory may be called that of mercantile exchange, as if the passage read “like for like,” “an equivalent for an equivalent,” “as one dead thing (=skin) resembles another dead thing.” Ewald. Thus so long as Job keeps his life, he is only half tried. Hitzig also interprets: One gives skin for skin; that is, every thing has its price, but a man will take nothing, and will give every thing, for his life: as in a storm the most precious freight is cast into the sea that the human freight may be saved. The Jewish expositors take the meaning to be, One gives up skin to preserve skin; that is, parts with a diseased limb for the sake of the rest; “one holds up the arm,” as Raschi suggests, “to avert the fatal blow from the head.” Third. Olshausen makes the saying to hinge upon the idea of person: “As long as thou leavest his person untouched, he will leave thee personally unassailed.” Renan regards it as a proverb, the sense of which is, that man is only moderately sensible to exterior losses, which do not touch his person. Fourth. Carey’s view is, that the proverb contains a sort of reductio ad absurdum argument, thus: Never expect a man to part with his skin unless you supply him with another; an impossible condition, and therefore equivalent to never expect that a man will part with his skin on any conditions whatever; in other words, On no terms will a man part with his life. To save his life, a man will part with every thing else. Fifth. A writer in Jour. of Sac. Literature, (January, 1859, p. 337) discards the idea of a proverb. He would translate בעד , around or about, instead of for, as it is in Job 1:10. The idea then would be, skin around skin, (meaning a succession of skins,) yea, all that a man hath around HIMSELF, will he surrender; but put forth thine hand now, and reach unto his bone and flesh. (Comp. Job 10:11.) The first of these opinions, which is also substantially that of Vaihinger, Dillmann, Heiligstedt, Canon Cook, etc., is unquestionably the most satisfactory. It is in keeping with the malicious aspersion upon human virtue that inaugurated the preceding trials, and is a charge of basal inhumanity upon our whole race. The selfish feelings, it means to say, are ever uppermost in man’s heart. The stoicism that Job has already shown is proof that he cares not if his whole family perish, so long as he can keep a whole skin.