Job 19:17

Once more, if possible an acuter misery he is become intolerable to those most dear to him.

though I intreated Perhaps, and I am loathsome to the children of. The word as known in Heb. means to be gracious to, to pity(Job 19:21), in the simple form (here), and to seek favour to oneself, or beseech, in the reflexive (Job 19:16), but the simple form has nowhere the meaning of "beseech" or entreat. The Arab. has a root of the same spelling, which means to smell badly, to stink, a sense parallel to the meaning of the first clause, where "strange" means offensive.

The last words of the verse "children of mine own body" are difficult; they mean literally, children of my womb. The word usually rendered wombis used occasionally of the father, Psalms 132:11; Micah 6:7. The Prologue narrates the death of Job's children, and the same assumption is made in the Poem, ch. Job 8:4; Job 29:5, and it is not to be thought that another mode of representation appears here. In Job 19:15, however, Job has still maids and servants, though his servants are represented in the Prologue as having perished. As he has other servants he might have other children. These might be children of concubines, as Job lived in the patriarchal age, though no allusion is made to such connexions, and the references to his wife are of such a kind as to suggest that Job lived in a state of strict monogamy. Or the expression "children of my body" might be used somewhat loosely to mean grandchildren children of his sons. The impression conveyed by the Prologue is that the seven sons were unmarried, though this is left uncertain. Others consider the phrase "children of my womb" to mean, children of my mother children of the same womb with myself.