Job had it hard. What with boils, and bereavements, and bankruptcy, and a foolish wife, he wished he was dead. His flesh was gone, and his bones were dry. His teeth wasted away until nothing but the enamel seemed left. He cries out, “I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.” There has been some difference of opinion about this passage. St. Jerome, and Schultens, and Doctors Good and Peele and Barnes, have all tried their forceps on Job’s teeth. You deny my interpretation, and say, “What did Job know about the enamel of the teeth?” He knew everything about it. Dental surgery is almost as old as the earth. The mummies of Egypt, thousands of years old, are found today with gold filling in their teeth. Ovid, and Horace, and Solomon, and Moses wrote about these important factors of the body. To other provoking complaints, Job, I think, had added an exasperating toothache; and putting his hand against the inflamed face, he says, “I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.” A very narrow escape, you say, for Job’s body and soul; but there are thousands of men who make just as narrow escape for their soul. There was a time when the partition between them and ruin was no thicker than a tooth’s enamel; but as Job finally escaped, so have they. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
