All my inward friends - Margin, "the men of my secret." The meaning is those, who were admitted to the intimacy of friendship or who were permitted to be acquainted with his secret thoughts, purposes, and plans. The word uses here (סוד sôd) denotes properly "a couch, cushions, pillow," on which one reclines; then a "divan," a circle of persons sitting together for consultation or conversation; and hence, it refers to those who are sitting together in intimate counsel, (see Job 15:8, note; Job 29:4, note) and then familiar conversation, intimacy. Here the phrase "men of my intimacy" (סודי sôdı̂y) denotes those who were admitted to intimate friendship. All such persons had now forsaken him, and turned against him.

My inward friends - Those who were my greatest intimates.

All my inward friends abhorred me,.... Or "the men of my secret" (m); who were so very familiar with him, that he imparted the secrets of his heart, and the most private affairs of life, unto them, placing so much confidence in them, and treating them as his bosom friends; for this is always reckoned a great instance of friendship, Job 15:15; and yet their minds were set against him; their affections were alienated from him; they abhorred the sight of him, and declined all conversation with him, even all of them; not one showed respect unto him:
and they whom I loved; or "this whom I loved" (n); this and that and the other particular friend, that he loved more than others: though all men are to be loved as the creatures of God, and as fellow creatures, and especially good men, even all the saints; yet there are some that engross a greater share of love than others, among natural and spiritual relations; as Joseph was more loved by his father than the rest of his children; and, even by our Lord, John was loved more than the other disciples: and so Job, he had some particular friends that he loved above others; and yet these not only turned away from him in the time of his adversity, and turned their backs on him, and would have nothing to say to him for his comfort, nor afford him any relief of any kind in his distress, but
are turned against men; were turned against him, and became his enemies; and, as David says of some that he had a love for, for my love, "they are my adversaries", Psalm 109:4.
(m) "viri secreti mei", Montanus; "homines secreti mei", Cocceius, Schmidt; "viri arcani mei", Beza, Mercerus; "homines arcani mei consilii", Michaelis. (n) "et quem", V. L. "et hie seu is quem", Mercerus, Drusius.

inward--confidential; literally, "men of my secret"--to whom I entrusted my most intimate confidence.

מתי סודי is the name he gives those to whom he confides his most secret affairs; סוד (vid., on Psalm 25:14) signifies either with a verbal notion, secret speaking (Arab. sâwada, III. form from sâda, to press one's self close upon, esp. as sârra, to speak in secret with any one), or what is made firm, i.e., what is impenetrable, therefore a secret (from sâda, to be or make close, firm, compact; cognate root, יסד, wasada, cognate in signification, sirr, a secret, from sarra, שׁרר, which likewise signifies to make firm). Those to whom he has made known his most secret plans (comp. Psalm 55:13-15) now abhor him; and those whom he has thus (זה, as Job 15:17) become attached to, and to whom he has shown his affection, - he says this with an allusion to the three, - have turned against him. They gave tokens of their love and honour to him, when he was in the height of his happiness and prosperity, but they have not even shown any sympathy with him in his present form of distress.
(Note: The disease which maims or devours the limbs, dâ'u el-gudhâm [vid. supra, p. 281], which generically includes Arabian leprosy, cancer, and syphilis, and is called the "first-born of death" in Job 18:13, is still in Arabia the most dreaded disease, in the face of which all human sympathy ceases. In the steppe, even the greatest personage who is seized with this disease is removed at least a mile or two from the encampment, where a charbûsh, i.e., a small black hair-tent, is put up for him, and an old woman, who has no relations living, is given him as an attendant until he dies. No one visits him, not even his nearest relations. He is cast off as muqâtal ollah. - Wetzst. The prejudice combated by the book of Job, that the leper is, as such, one who is smitten by the wrath of God, has therefore as firm hold of the Arabian mind in the present day as it had centuries ago.)
His bones cleave (דבקה, Aq. ἐκολλήθη, lxx erroneously ἐσάπησαν, i.e., רקבה) to his skin, i.e., the bones may be felt and seen through the skin, and the little flesh that remains is wasted away almost to a skeleton (vid., Job 7:15). This is not contradictory to the primary characteristic symptom of the lepra nodosa; for the wasting away of the rest of the body may attain an extraordinarily high degree in connection with the hypertrophy of single parts. He can indeed say of himself, that he is only escaped (se soit chapp) with the skin of his teeth. By the "skin of his teeth" the gums are generally understood. But (1) the gum is not skin, and can therefore not be called "skin of the teeth" in any language; (2) Job complains in Job 19:17 of his offensive breath, which in itself does not admit of the idea of healthy gums, and especially if it be the result of a scorbutic ulceration of the mouth, presupposes an ulcerous destruction of the gums. The current translation, "with my gums," is therefore to be rejected on account both of the language and the matter. For this reason Stickel (whom Hahn follows) takes עור as inf. from ערר, and translates: "I am escaped from it with my teeth naked" lit. with the being naked of my teeth, i.e., with teeth that are no longer covered, standing forward uncovered. This explanation is pathologically satisfactory; but it has against it (1) the translation of עור, which is wide of the most natural interpretation of the word; (2) that in close connection with ואתמלטה one expects the mention of a part of the body that has remained whole. Is there not, then, really a skin of the teeth in the proper sense? The gum is not skin, but the teeth are surrounded with a skin in the jaw, the so-called periosteum. If we suppose, what is natural enough, that his offensive breath, Job 19:17, arises from ulcers in the mouth (in connection with scorbutus, as is known, the breath has a terribly offensive smell), we obtain the following picture of Job's disease: his flesh is in part hypertrophically swollen, in part fearfully wasted away; the gums especially are destroyed and wasted away from the teeth, only the periosteum round about the teeth is still left to him, and single remnants of the covering of his loose and projecting teeth.
Thus we interpret עזר שׁנּי in the first signification of the words, and have also no need for supposing that Job 19:20 is a proverbial phrase for "I have with great care and difficulty escaped the extreme." The declaration perfectly corresponds to the description of the disease; and it is altogether needless with Hupfeld, after Job 13:14, to read עור בשׁני, vitam solam et nudam vix reportavi, which is moreover inappropriate, since Job regards himself as one who is dying. Symm. alters the position of the בּ similarly, since he translates after the Syriac Hexapla: καὶ ἐξέτιλλον (ותלשׁת) τὸ δέρμα τοῖς ὀδοῦσιν μου, from מלט = מרט, Arab. mllṭ, nudare pilis, which J. D. Michaelis also compares; the sense, however, which is thereby gained, is beneath all criticism. On the aoristic ואתמלּטה, vid., on Job 1:15. Stickel has on this passage an excursus on this ah, to which he also attributes, in this addition to the historic tense, the idea of striving after a goal: "I slip away, I escape;" it certainly gives vividness to the notion of the action, if it may not always have the force of direction towards anything. Therefore: with a destroyed flesh, and indeed so completely destroyed that there is even nothing left to him of sound skin except the skin of his teeth, wasted away to a skeleton, and become both to sight and smell a loathsome object; - such is the sufferer the friends have before them, - one who is tortured, besides, by a dark conflict which they only make more severe, - one who now implores them for pity, and because he has no pity to expect from man, presses forward to a hope which reaches beyond the grave.

Inward - My intimates and confidants, to whom I imparted all my thoughts and counsels.