After my skin is destroyed

We are slowly working our way through the book of Job in Immanuel’s Sunday morning Scripture Study, but it has also been appointed for daily reading in the Treasury of Daily Prayer recently. Today’s passage was from Job 19, and I was struck in a different way by Job’s well-known words, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God” (vv25f). “After my skin has been thus destroyed…” – these words I have always understood as simply a reference to death, to the decay of the flesh. Despite returning to the earth from which man was formed, still he confesses hope in the resurrection on account of the Redeemer, our Lord Jesus Christ.

That’s all true. But Job’s statement was far from the abstraction I have made of it. Studying it in Bible class, and reading through it these last few weeks, has shown me that Job’s words express a present reality for him – his skin is being destroyed, by a disease most scholars say is elephantiasis. In the midst of physical and spiritual torment, he confesses its end in the Redeemer. In the midst of our afflictions, far more light, we can see in them a gift, an opportunity to confess the Redeemer and look for an eschatological salvation.

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