Albert Barnes Commentary Job 19:17

"My breath is strange to my wife, And my supplication to the children of mine own mother." — Job 19:17 (ASV)

My breath is strange to my wife - Schultens renders this, “my breath is loathsome to my wife,” and Noyes does as well. Wemyss translates it, “my own wife turns aside from my breath.” Dr. Good, “my breath is scattered away by my wife.” The literal meaning is, “my breath is “strange” (זרה zârâh) to my wife”; and the idea is this: his disease had caused such a change in him that his breath was no longer what she had been accustomed to breathe without offense. Consequently, she now turned away from it as if it were the breath of a stranger. Jerome renders it, “Halitum meum exhorruit uxor mea - my wife abhors my breath.” It may be worth noting here that only one wife of Job is mentioned—a remarkable fact, as he probably lived in an age when polygamy was common.

I entreated her - I appealed to her by all that was tender in their domestic relationship, but in vain. From this, it would seem that even his wife had regarded him as an object of divine displeasure and had also left him to suffer alone.

For the children’s sake of mine own body - Margin, “my belly.” There is considerable variety in the interpretation of this passage. The word rendered “my own body” (בטני beṭenı̂y) literally means “my belly or womb.” Noyes, Gesenius, and some others suppose it means the children of his own mother! But assuredly, this was scarcely an appeal Job would likely make to his wife in such circumstances.

There can be no impropriety in supposing that Job referred to himself, and that the word is used somewhat in the same sense as the word loins is in such passages as Genesis 35:11, Genesis 46:26, Exodus 1:5, and 1 Kings 8:19. Understood this way, it would refer to his own children, and the appeal to his wife was founded on the relationship they had sustained with them.

Though their children were now dead, he referred to their former united attachment to them and the common affliction they had experienced in their loss. He appealed to his wife to show him kindness, reminding her of all their former love for their children and all the sorrow they had experienced in their death—but his appeal was in vain.

Jerome renders this, “Orabam filios uteri mei.” The Septuagint, not understanding it and trying to make sense of it, introduced a statement that is undoubtedly false, though Rosenmuller accords with it: “I called affectionately (κολακεύων kolakeuōn) the sons of my concubines” - υἵους παλλακίδων μου huious pallakidōn mou.

But the whole meaning is evidently that he made a solemn and tender appeal to his wife, in view of all the joys and sorrows they had experienced as the united head of a family now no more. What would reach the heart of an estranged wife, if such an appeal would not?