Job 19:17
What does Job 19:17 mean?
My breath is offensive to my wife. I am loathsome to the children of my own mother.
The short answer
Job 19:17 is one of the rawest lines in Job's long complaint. "My breath is offensive to my wife," he says, and "I am loathsome to the children of my own mother." The two people-groups named here—his wife and his own brothers—are the innermost circle of his life. If anyone should have stayed close through his illness, it was them. Instead, his diseased body has become so repellent that even they keep their distance.
The verse works on two levels at once. On the surface, it is physical: Job's condition has ravaged him, and his breath and appearance are hard to be near. But underneath is something worse. As John Hartley points out in his commentary, everyone around Job assumes that God has struck him down. His sickness looks like a verdict. So people pull away not only because he is unpleasant to be near, but because standing with him might mean standing against God's apparent judgment.
That combination—bodily revulsion plus suspected divine punishment—dissolves bonds that should have been unbreakable. Hartley notes that in Job's patriarchal world, kinship ties carried strong obligations; brothers were expected to look out for one another. Yet in Job's telling, God himself has split that bond apart. His trusted friends no longer acknowledge him; relatives and associates have withdrawn.
So the verse is not just a sad detail. It is an accusation folded into a lament. Job is saying that his suffering has cost him not only his health and property but his place among the people who loved him—and that God is somehow behind the estrangement. The verse refuses to soften that. It lets a sick man name exactly how alone he is.
What scholars say
Why would Job's own family abandon him? Hartley answers by connecting two forces at work: revulsion at Job's diseased body and the shared assumption that God has struck him—pressures strong enough, he argues, to break even the tight kinship bonds of a patriarchal society.
“Because they all believe that God has smitten him and they are repulsed at his grotesque appearance and offensive odor, not one of them gives him any support. Such isolation is a frequent complaint of one enduring illness or an austere hardship. Job's brothers head the list of those who shun him. In patriarchal society the bond among family members was very strong, with each one being concerned for his brother's welfare. God, however, has driven a wide wedge into this tight bond. Even Job's trusted friends ( yōḏəʿîm ) are estranged from him. No longer acknowledging their ties with him, they do not come and offer him any help in his time of need. So too have Job's relatives and associates withdrawn.”
What it means for you
This verse gives honest language to an experience many people know: serious illness or hardship can isolate you precisely when you most need company. Friends fall silent. Family visits taper off. Sometimes people quietly wonder whether you brought it on yourself. Job 19:17 says that scripture already knows this pattern—and does not pretend it away.
If you are the sufferer, Job's words give you permission to name the abandonment rather than perform cheerfulness. If you are watching someone else suffer, the verse is a warning: do not let discomfort, or a private theory about what their suffering means, do what it did to Job's family. Presence, not explanation, is what the isolated need.
Job 19 in context
Job 19 is Job's reply to Bildad, who has just described the fate of the wicked in terms that clearly point at Job. Job answers with one of his darkest laments: God has stripped his honor, blocked his path, and turned against him. Verses 13-19 trace a widening circle of abandonment—relatives, guests, servants, wife, brothers, close friends, even young children who mock him. Verse 17 sits at the intimate center of that circle. Yet the chapter then swings to its famous peak in verse 25: "I know that my Redeemer lives."