Bible Strands
Job 7:5
My flesh is clothed with worms and encrusted with dirt; my skin is cracked and festering.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Job speaks these words to God while enduring prolonged physical suffering and sleepless nights. He articulates his condition in the immediate aftermath of describing the dragging darkness and fleeting days.
The words — The Hebrew לָבַשׁ (labash) literally means "to be clothed," applied here to worms covering his flesh. The term עוֹרִי (ori), meaning "my skin," is paired with רָגַע (raga), describing its hardened, cracked state.
The thread — This imagery of bodily corruption and worm-covered decay appears in Job 17:14 and Isaiah 14:11, where maggots and worms signify descent into Sheol. It also parallels the boils Job receives in Job 2:7, establishing a consistent biblical motif of physical ruin.
Why it lands — The text demands acknowledgment of the body's fragility and the reality of unmediated suffering. It leaves the reader to confront the physical limits of human endurance without offering immediate resolution.
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
My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust; my skin is broken, and become loathsome.
Cross-references
- Job 17:14 and say to corruption, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’
- Isaiah 14:11 Your pomp has been brought down to Sheol, along with the music of your harps. Maggots are your bed and worms your blanket.
- Job 2:7 So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and infected Job with terrible boils from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.
- Job 9:31 then You would plunge me into the pit, and even my own clothes would despise me.
- Job 19:26 Even after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.
- Job 24:20 The womb forgets them; the worm feeds on them; they are remembered no more. So injustice is broken like a tree.
- Job 30:18 With great force He grasps my garment; He seizes me by the collar of my tunic.
- Psalms 38:5 My wounds are foul and festering because of my sinful folly.
- Isaiah 1:6 From the sole of your foot to the top of your head, there is no soundness—only wounds and welts and festering sores neither cleansed nor bandaged nor soothed with oil.
- Isaiah 66:24 “As they go forth, they will see the corpses of the men who have rebelled against Me; for their worm will never die, their fire will never be quenched, and they will be a horror to all mankind.”