Job 19:15

Job 19:15, in plain English

Even the people who live in Job's own household—his guests and servants—now treat him like a stranger, someone from another land they don't know.

Why it's here

The sphere of rejection keeps narrowing. Now it's not just distant relations; it's people under his own roof. The servants and household guests, who would have known him well, now regard him as a foreign outsider. He's become alien in his own home.

Who's speaking

Job

Where it sits in the story

There's a particular kind of pain in being unknown or rejected by those closest to you. Job is experiencing the progressive nature of abandonment—it moves inward, toward the center of his life.

The scholarly reading

Even those in his own household—guests he has hosted and servants he has employed—now treat him as a foreigner or stranger in his own home.

Language and setting

The phrase גְּרֵי בֵיתִי (g'rei beiti, 'guests of my house' or 'sojourners in my house') plays on the Hebrew root גּוּר (gur, 'sojourn'). What is devastating here is the inversion: once Job was the host dispensing hospitality (the traditional role of the wise and righteous); now he is treated as an outsider even in his own dwelling. The term נׇכְרִי (nochri, 'foreigner') denotes one with whom social contracts do not hold. This is the ultimate domestic humiliation—being alien in one's own household.

Voice

Job, describing the reversal of hospitality relationships within his own home.

Significance

This reflects the ancient Near Eastern virtue of hospitality as foundational to society (see Abraham's hospitality in Genesis 18). By depicting himself as a stranger in his own home, Job invokes the deepest possible social disorder, prefiguring Jesus's lament: 'A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home' (Matthew 13:57).

13He has removed my brothers from me; my acquaintances have abandoned me.

14My kinsmen have failed me, and my friends have forgotten me.

15My guests and maidservants count me as a stranger; I am a foreigner in their sight.

16I call for my servant, but he does not answer, though I implore him with my own mouth.

17My breath is repulsive to my wife, and I am loathsome to my own family.

Read all of Job 19 — From the lowest depths, Job makes the highest claim in the book: I know that my Redeemer lives, and in the end He will stand upon the earth.