Job 19:26

26. And after my skin That is, when my skin is no more. “After” can only be a preposition (See Hirtzel in loc.) If, as some prefer, it be read adverbially, we shall have, And after they have thus destroyed my skin. But there are greater difficulties in this than in the reading of the Authorized Version.

Destroy this So many and varied are the agencies that destroy the body that they are not enumerated. The Orientals, however, were of the opinion that worms were the principal cause of its destruction. They say according to Roberts that the life is first destroyed by them and afterwards the body. The word נקפ , in the Piel rendered destroy, in the Arabic ( nakafa) signifies to smash or crush the head. It is one of the most powerful words in the Semitic languages to express complete destruction.

This Though not expressed, the allusion is evidently to the body.

Yet “Yet” ( ו ) is adversative. (See Nordheimer, 2:294.)

In my flesh From my flesh. The word min, from, is supposed by some to mean without; apart from, and is thus given by Conant, Zockler in Lange, Ewald, etc. But Pusey and Perowne are right when they say that מן can no more, of itself, mean “without” than our word “from.” At the same time, the grammatical construction justifies the sense of in. Thus Rosenmuller, Kosegarten, Welte, Clarke, Carey, Noyes, Wordsworth, etc.: also the Vulgate, the Targum, (Walton’s rendering,) etc. The use of the word min, from, in the sense of in, is by no means alien to the Hebrew. This is especially the case in connexion with verbs of speaking, hearing, seeing, etc. The place from which the observer looks is invariably connected with the verb by the word from. A like remark holds good of the other senses. (GESENIUS, Thesaurus, p. 804.) Thus Sol. Song, (Song of Solomon 2:9,) “he looketh forth at,” (literally, from,) “the windows.” Comp. 2 Chronicles 6:21. Eastward, i.e., in the east, (Genesis 2:8,) is literally from the east. Besides, Job freely uses at least five other prepositions to express without, either one of which would have been better to convey the idea of without than the min before us. For instance, (Hebrew text,) Job 4:11; Job 4:20-21; Job 6:6; Job 7:6; Job 8:11; Job 24:7; Job 24:10; Job 30:8; Job 30:28; Job 31:19; Job 31:39; Job 33:9; Job 34:6; Job 34:20; Job 38:2; Job 38:41; Job 39:16; Job 41:33. Thrice, indeed, elsewhere in Job, min occurs in a privative sense, (Job 3:19; Job 11:15; Job 21:9,) which, however, can hardly be regarded as parallel cases. If Job speaks of beholding God with his bodily eyes after that body has been destroyed, it must be from a new body. The subsequent beholding of God with his eyes, (“ mine eyes,”) identifies it with the body he then had, the body to which he had before pointed with the deictic this. The unbiased interpretation of this passage discloses substantially the elements of the doctrine of the resurrection, even though their full meaning may have been hidden from Job. See Excursus V.