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Job 10 · a question people ask

Why does Job talk about milk and cheese?

In the text

"Haven’t you poured me out like milk, and curdled me like cheese?" (10:10). The chapter doesn't explain the picture beyond where it stands. It comes in Job's list of what God's hands did in making him (10:8): after "you have fashioned me as clay" (10:9) and before "You have clothed me with skin and flesh" (10:11). The Hebrew word for cheese here, gevinah, comes nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. This study adds no explanation the text doesn't give.

The verses

““‘Your hands have framed me and fashioned me altogether, yet you destroy me. Remember, I beg you, that you have fashioned me as clay. Will you bring me into dust again? Haven’t you poured me out like milk, and curdled me like cheese? You have clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews.”
Job 10:8-11 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Job 10

Job 10: Your hands have framed me

In Hebrew, the preserved of "Your visitation has preserved my spirit" (10:12) and the mark of "if I sin, then you mark me" (10:14) are one verb, shamar, two verses apart. It is the verb of the LORD's words to Satan: "Only spare his life" (2:6).

In Favor, questions like this come up right where they arise as you read, with the Hebrew and Greek behind the words and how the chapter leads to Jesus.

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions