Bible Strands
Job 13:28
So man wastes away like something rotten, like a moth-eaten garment.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Job speaks to God while describing divine surveillance that restricts his every movement. He addresses this moment of intense suffering and perceived confinement.
The words — רָקָב (ra.Kav) translates literally to “rottenness” or decay, and עָשׁ ('Ash) means “moth.” These terms anchor the simile of gradual consumption.
The thread — The moth imagery recurs in Job 4:19, where clay-dwelling humans are compared to crushed moths, and in Psalms 39:11, where God consumes what a person holds dear like a moth. Numbers 12:12 also uses moth-like consumption to describe physical decay.
Why it lands — The text states that human bodies deteriorate under divine scrutiny like rot or eaten fabric. It asks the reader to acknowledge physical fragility as a factual condition rather than a metaphorical warning.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And he, as a rotten thing, consumeth, as a garment that is moth eaten.
Cross-references
- Psalms 39:11 You discipline and correct a man for his iniquity, consuming like a moth what he holds dear; surely each man is but a vapor. Selah
- Job 4:19 how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who can be crushed like a moth!
- Numbers 12:12 Please do not let her be like a stillborn infant whose flesh is half consumed when he comes out of his mother’s womb.”
- Job 30:17 Night pierces my bones, and my gnawing pains never rest.
- Job 30:29 I have become a brother of jackals, a companion of ostriches.
- Hosea 5:12 So I am like a moth to Ephraim, and like decay to the house of Judah.