By the skin of my teeth

Job's narrowest escape — and the hope he held beyond it.

Job lost his herds, his servants and his children in a single day, and then his health, struck "with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown" (Job 1:13-19, Job 2:7). Three friends came to comfort him, but as the long debate went on they pressed him to admit that his suffering must be punishment for hidden sin.

In chapter 19 Job answers them. He feels besieged by God and abandoned by everyone else — his brothers, his kinsfolk, his servants, even his wife (Job 19:13-19). "All my familiar friends abhor me," he says. Then he describes what is left of him: "My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, And I am escaped with the skin of my teeth" (Job 19:20). He begs his friends for pity — and then, from the lowest point of his complaint, speaks the words for which the chapter is best loved: "I know that my Redeemer liveth" (Job 19:25).

Job is saying how close he has come to death. His body is wasted to skin and bone, and he has escaped with the skin of his teeth — the thinnest margin there is. The Hebrew, be'or shinnai, is as strange as the English, since teeth have no skin. Older commentators read it in different ways: some take "the skin of my teeth" to be the gums, the only part of Job not covered in sores; others treat it as a proverb for escaping with bare life and nothing more. Either way the sense is clear: Job is left with next to nothing.

That is what makes the next verses so striking. With nothing left to hold, Job wishes his words were "graven in the rock for ever" (Job 19:24): "I know that my Redeemer liveth, And at last he will stand up upon the earth" (Job 19:25). The Hebrew go'el is the next of kin who stands up for a relative — buying back his land, freeing him, defending his cause. Job, deserted by his own kin, is sure of a Redeemer who lives and will stand up for him, and that "without my flesh shall I see God" (Job 19:26). The man hanging on by the skin of his teeth is hanging on to God.

"By the skin of my teeth" now means only just — a train caught as the doors closed, an exam passed by a single mark. The ASV reads "I am escaped with the skin of my teeth"; everyday English has changed with to by, but the phrase is Job's.

The modern sense matches the literal meaning well: the narrowest possible escape. What the idiom leaves out is the setting. Job was not describing a lucky near miss but a body wasted by suffering and a life emptied of friends, and his narrow escape was not the end of his story. The phrase is used faithfully when it names a real close call; the chapter adds that even at the thinnest margin a believer can say, with Job, "I know that my Redeemer liveth".

the skin of my teeth

"with the skin of my teeth" — the Hebrew is as literal, and as puzzling, as the English

Redeemer

my redeemer: the next of kin who buys back, frees and defends a relative

And Satan answered Jehovah, and said, Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.

The accuser's claim, "Skin for skin": a man will give anything for his life. Job's story tests it.

My breath is strange to my wife, And my supplication to the children of mine own mother. Even young children despise me; If I arise, they speak against me. All my familiar friends abhor me, And they whom I loved are turned against me.

Just before the saying: Job's closest people have turned from him.

Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: The snare is broken, and we are escaped.

Another narrow escape, this one sung with thanks: "The snare is broken, and we are escaped."

If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as through fire.

Paul's picture of a narrow escape: saved, "yet so as through fire."

Behold, we call them blessed that endured: ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord, how that the Lord is full of pity, and merciful.

How the New Testament remembers Job: he endured, and "the Lord is full of pity, and merciful."

And Jehovah turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: and Jehovah gave Job twice as much as he had before.

The end of the story: Job was not left with only the skin of his teeth.

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