Job 19:17

Job 19:17, in plain English

Job's own wife finds his very presence—even his breath—repulsive, and his own family members recoil from him.

Why it's here

This is perhaps the deepest cut. His wife, his closest companion, cannot bear to be near him. His family doesn't just avoid him; they find him loathsome. Job's physical condition from his illness has become so severe that even those bound to him by love are repelled.

Who's speaking

Job

Where it sits in the story

This echoes the lament psalms where the sufferer describes being despised even by loved ones. It shows how completely Job's suffering has isolated him from every human connection.

The scholarly reading

Job's very presence has become repulsive to those closest to him, particularly his wife, who recoils from his physical form and breath.

Language and setting

The term נִשְׁמַת (nishmati, 'my breath') may denote both literally foul breath and metaphorically the exhalation of life. The verb זָר (zar, 'foreign' or 'strange') applied to his own wife suggests that intimacy itself—the most basic human bond—has been severed. His condition has transgressed the boundary between recognition and alienation. Ancient commentators, including Jerome, saw in this verse a foreshadowing of leprosy's social consequences, though the text does not specify the nature of Job's affliction. What matters is that even conjugal relations have been catastrophically disrupted.

Voice

Job, describing the recoil of his own wife from his physical presence.

Significance

This approaches the condition of death in life—the being-in-the-world of one who has become repulsive to the intimate other. It recalls Hannah's suffering (1 Samuel 1) but with the added dimension of physical revulsion, creating a totality of isolation that extends into the most private sphere. This becomes a biblical precursor to modern phenomenologies of suffering (Elaine Scarry, Arthur Frank) that describe how pain isolates the sufferer from bodily connection with others.

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.

18Even little boys scorn me; when I appear, they deride me.

19All my best friends despise me, and those I love have turned against me.

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.