Job 19 · a question people ask
"After my skin is destroyed, then I will see God in my flesh" (19:26). When does Job expect to see God?
Job says, "In the end, he will stand upon the earth" (19:25), and "After my skin is destroyed, then I will see God in my flesh, whom I, even I, will see on my side. My eyes will see, and not as a stranger" (19:26-27). In my flesh is, in Hebrew, umibbesari: my flesh (tap flesh) with the small word min in front, which Brown-Driver-Briggs describes as "expressing the idea of separation, hence out of, from", among other uses; the same Hebrew word, spelled the same, is with my flesh in 19:22. So the Hebrew can be read more than one way, and Christians read the verse in two main ways, each resting on its verses. Both agree that Job expects to see God with his own eyes (19:27), and that the book ends with Job alive and restored: "The LORD restored Job’s prosperity when he prayed for his friends" (42:10).
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
After Job's death
Those who read it this way take "After my skin is destroyed" (19:26) as Job's death, and "In the end" (19:25) as the last day. Job had asked, "If a man dies, will he live again?" (14:14). They read "in my flesh" as seeing God in a body raised from the dead, as Paul writes, "the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed" (1 Corinthians 15:52), and as the risen Jesus said, "a spirit doesn’t have flesh and bones, as you see that I have" (Luke 24:39). Others who read the verse of the time after death take the min of umibbesari in its sense of separation, Job seeing God apart from his body, and set beside it Paul's "to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:8). Either way, on this reading Job's hope reaches past his death.
Job 19:25-26 · Job 14:14 · 1 Corinthians 15:52 · Luke 24:39 · 2 Corinthians 5:8
Within Job's life, when God answers him
Those who read it this way take "After my skin is destroyed" (19:26) as the wasting Job has described, "My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh" (19:20) and "My skin closes up, and breaks out afresh" (7:5), and "in my flesh" as while he is still alive. They point to how the book ends: "the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind" (38:1), and Job says, "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you" (42:5), where eye and sees are the same Hebrew words as eyes and see in 19:27's "My eyes will see". And the LORD says to Eliphaz, "you have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job has" (42:7). On this reading Job's words look to God answering him and standing up for him before he dies, as the book goes on to tell.
Job 19:26 · Job 19:20 · Job 7:5 · Job 38:1 · Job 42:5 · Job 19:27 · Job 42:7
The verses
“But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, he will stand upon the earth. After my skin is destroyed, then I will see God in my flesh, whom I, even I, will see on my side. My eyes will see, and not as a stranger. “My heart is consumed within me.”
“Why do you persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?”
“The LORD restored Job’s prosperity when he prayed for his friends. The LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.”