Job 19:20

20. The skin of my teeth In the last stages of the disease (elephantiasis) the tongue and the gums are attacked, and the mouth filled with ulcers so as to render continuous speech impossible. This terrible infliction he has (he means to say) thus far escaped. The Germans call the gums zahn-fleisch, tooth-flesh, which, indeed, is the rendering Hitzig gives. An old English physician (Smith) in his “Portrait of Old Age,” (p. 69,) had hit upon the true sense of this passage. “There are two parts of the teeth: the basis and the radix, that is, the part which eminently appears white above the gums; this is that part which is within the gums, and stands fixed in the mandibles. Now, by Job’s skin or covering of his teeth, it is apparent he meant the gums which cover the roots of the teeth.” Wordsworth unnecessarily regards it “as a proverbial paradox.” Job is now in extremis. In the preceding chapter, while yet he could, he chanted his requiem. The next stage of his disease means death. There is but the skin of his teeth between him and sure destruction.