Interesting Idiom

Phew!

"What can I write about for Thoughtful/Thankful Thursday?" I contemplated just this very day and here's what I came up with.   I like idioms even though, or even perhaps because, it sounds like the word idiot.  Many are pretty evident in their origin while some take a bit of  homework to decipher their roots. "By the skin of your teeth" sounded like one that deserved some analyzing so here's what

I didn't realize this was from the Bible!

I discovered. This particular phrase was first recorded in the Bible's Old Testament in Job 19:20 which reads, according to the ESV version..."My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth".  However the Miles Cloverdale version of 1535 reads, "My bone hangeth to my skin, and the flesh is away, only there is left me the skin about my teeth".  The latter better explains the intent of Job's lament as he was going through a rough time and had so little flesh left that the only visible skin he had was the skin "about" his teeth meaning his gums! If we read the story of Job we learn he ended up better than he was before all his calamities and his faith helped him hold through his ordeal, so it's quite appropriate in it's present day use.  Here's the link I gleaned this info from if you'd care to dig deeper...

http://www.amoskwok.com/2009/05/the-skin-of-my-teeth.html

Hmmm, sounds interesting

In my search I found out a play was written about the topic called "The Skin of Our Teeth" by Thornton Wilder.  Now many of you learned types probably knew this but this was an interesting discovery for me so be patient with my bubblings.  The plot and it's trappings seem pretty intriguing (for instance the Antrobus family have a dinosaur and mammoth as pets) so I'd love to check this out.  But the basic premise is that mankind's history repeats itself and we continually go through bad times but always end up surviving...by the skin of our teeth.

I hope you had some light-bulb moments as I sure did researching this idiom and next time you have a "skin of your teeth" moment, you can relate a bit with Old Job!