Job 7:5

My body ¹  is clothed ²  with worms ³  and dirty scabs; ⁴  my skin is broken ⁵  and festering.

My body is clothed with worms and scabs, my skin is broken and festering.

"My flesh is clothed with worms and a crust of dirt, My skin hardens and runs.

My skin is filled with worms and scabs. My flesh breaks open, full of pus.

I'm covered with maggots and scabs. My skin gets scaly and hard, then oozes with pus.

My flesh is covered with worms and dust; my skin gets hard and then is cracked again.

My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt; my skin hardens, then breaks out again.

My flesh is caked with worms and dust, My skin is cracked and breaks out afresh.

My body ¹  is clothed ²  with worms ³  and dirty scabs; ⁴  my skin is broken ⁵  and festering.

¹ tn Heb “my flesh.”

² tn The implied comparison is vivid: the dirty scabs cover his entire body like a garment – so he is clothed with them.

³ sn The word for “worms” (רִמָּה, rimmah, a collective noun), is usually connected with rotten food (Exod 16:24), or the grave (Isa 14:11). Job’s disease is a malignant ulcer of some kind that causes the rotting of the flesh. One may recall that both Antiochus Epiphanes (2 Macc 9:9) and Herod Agrippa (Acts 12:23) were devoured by such worms in their diseases.

⁴ tn The text has “clods of dust.” The word גִּישׁ (gish, “dirty scabs”) is a hapax legomenon from גּוּשׁ (gush, “clod”). Driver suggests the word has a medical sense, like “pustules” (G. R. Driver, “Problems in the Hebrew text of Job,” VTSup 3 [1955]: 73) or “scabs” (JB, NEB, NAB, NIV). Driver thinks “clods of dust” is wrong; he repoints “dust” to make a new verb “to cover,” cognate to Arabic, and reads “my flesh is clothed with worms, and scab covers my skin.” This refers to the dirty scabs that crusted over the sores all over his body. The LXX links this with the second half of the verse: “And my body has been covered with loathsome worms, and I waste away, scraping off clods of dirt from my eruption.”

⁵ tn The meaning of רָגַע (raga’) is also debated here. D. J. A. Clines (Job [WBC], 163) does not think the word can mean “cracked” because scabs show evidence of the sores healing. But E. Dhorme (Job, 100) argues that the usage of the word shows the idea of “splitting, separating, making a break,” or the like. Here then it would mean “my skin splits” and as a result festers. This need not be a reference to the scabs, but to new places. Or it could mean that the scabbing never heals, but is always splitting open.