and after they flay my skin, /
from my flesh I shall behold God. Amos Hakham boldly relates this strong
line to Job’s wish to incise his words in stone, paraphrasing it as follows:
“The scars and the bruises in my flesh are the writing God inscribes in my
flesh instead of the inscription I sought to make.” If Hakham is right, Job
would be representing himself here somewhat like the condemned man in Kafka’s
“In the Penal Colony” who is meant to come to an illuminating understanding of
his crime through the terrible machine that inscribes his transgression on his
flesh. Job, however, does not concede that he has sinned, so the idea he
expresses is that through all his suffering, through the tatters of his
lacerated flesh, he will in the end behold God, come face-to-face with his
divine persecutor and finally vindicate himself. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew
Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:515)
26b. Is the min of the expression mibbeśārī
to be read “from within my flesh” or “from without my flesh”? That is, does Job
envisage seeing God in his body, in a disembodied form or in a vision?
Traditional Israelite thought would clearly favor the first option. Moreover it
is clear from Job’s desire to come face to face with God (13:15, 20, 24) that
he wants to see God as Job the human being, not as an ethereal spirit. Here (in
v. 26b) Job hopes to see with his “eyes,” which also suggests a physical
seeing. Terrien demonstrates that “when used with a verb expressing vision or
perception, the preposition min
refers to the point of vantage, the locale from which or through which the
function of the sight operates (Ps. 33:13–14; S. of Sol. 2:9).” Thus the KJV
“In my flesh I shall see God” is preferable to RSV “from/without my flesh I
shall see God.” (Norman C. Habel, The Book of Job: A Commentary
[The Old Testament Library; Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1985], 293-94)
Then from my flesh I shall see
God: from my flesh can also be understood as “without my flesh,” as in the rsv
footnote, or the tev footnote “although not in this body.” The question most
argued is the manner of Job’s seeing God. Job’s overwhelming desire so often
repeated is to come to court face to face with God (13:15, 20, 24). He wants to
confront God as a living human being, not as a spirit, and in verse 27 he hopes
to see God with his eyes. As kjv says, “In my flesh shall I see God,” or as tev
translates, “while still in this body I will see God.” In some languages it may
be necessary to transpose the two lines of verse 26 to say, for example, “While
I still have my physical body, I shall see God even though disease has eaten
away my skin.” (William David Reyburn, A Handbook on the Book of Job [UBS Handbook Series (New York:
United Bible Societies, 1992], 364)
26. This verse is notoriously
difficult. The ancient versions all differ and no reliance can be placed in any
of them. Various emendations have been proposed, but are scarcely worth
discussing. Many Christian interpreters since Origen have tried to read here an
affirmation of immortality or resurrection, but without success: Chrysostom
quite correctly refuted this interpretation with the citation of 14:12 ff. If
one sticks to the text as received, the given translation appears to fit the
context as well as any, though many problems persist. Cf. J. Speer, ZAW 25
(1905), 47–140. Dahood (Psalms II,
second Note on Ps 73:26) offers a novel and provocative interpretation of the
famous enigma mibbĕśārî which he
would read mĕbuśśārî, construing the
form as Puʿal participle with the suffix representing the third person rather
than the first and functioning as the dative of agency, “Refleshed by him, I
will gaze upon God.” Thus Dahood finds here expression of “the doctrine of the
creation of a new body for the afterlife.” This interpretation, if it could be
validated, would have considerable interest as anticipating the climax of
Paul’s famous discourse on the topic in 1 Cor 15. (Marvin H. Pope, Job: Introduction, Translation, and Notes,
[AYB 15; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008], 147)
