Job 30:17-19

30:17 Night pierces my bones;

my gnawing pains never cease.

30:18 With great power God grasps my clothing;

he binds me like the collar of my tunic.

30:19 He has flung me into the mud,

and I have come to resemble dust and ashes.

Job 30:30

30:30 My skin has turned dark on me;

my body is hot with fever.

Exodus 9:9-11

9:9 It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt and will cause boils to break out and fester 10  on both people and animals in all the land of Egypt.” 9:10 So they took soot from a furnace and stood before Pharaoh, Moses threw it into the air, and it caused festering boils to break out on both people and animals.

9:11 The magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for boils were on the magicians and on all the Egyptians.

Deuteronomy 28:27

28:27 The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, eczema, and scabies, all of which cannot be healed.

Deuteronomy 28:35

28:35 The Lord will afflict you in your knees and on your legs with painful, incurable boils – from the soles of your feet to the top of your head.

Revelation 16:11

16:11 They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their sufferings 11  and because of their sores, 12  but nevertheless 13  they still refused to repent 14  of their deeds.


tn The subject of the verb “pierces” can be the night (personified), or it could be God (understood), leaving “night” to be an adverbial accusative of time – “at night he pierces.”

tc The MT concludes this half-verse with “upon me.” That phrase is not in the LXX, and so many commentators delete it as making the line too long.

tn Heb “my gnawers,” which is open to several interpretations. The NASB and NIV take it as “gnawing pains”; cf. NRSV “the pain that gnaws me.” Some suggest worms in the sores (7:5). The LXX has “my nerves,” a view accepted by many commentators.

tn Heb “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

tc This whole verse is difficult. The first problem is that this verb in the MT means “is disguised [or disfigured],” indicating that Job’s clothes hang loose on him. But many take the view that the verb is a phonetic variant of חָבַשׁ (khavash, “to bind; to seize”) and that the Hitpael form is a conflation of the third and second person because of the interchange between them in the passage (R. Gordis, Job, 335). The commentaries list a number of conjectural emendations, but the image in the verse is probably that God seizes Job by the garment and throws him down.

tn The phrase “like the collar” is difficult, primarily because their tunics did not have collars. A translation of “neck” would suit better. Some change the preposition to בּ (bet), getting a translation “by the neck of my tunic.”

tn The MT has “become dark from upon me,” prompting some editions to supply the verb “falls from me” (RSV, NRSV), or “peels” (NIV).

tn The word “my bones” may be taken as a metonymy of subject, the bony framework indicating the whole body.

tn The word חֹרֶב (khorev) also means “heat.” The heat in this line is not that of the sun, but obviously a fever.

10 tn The word שְׁחִין (shÿkhin) means “boils.” It may be connected to an Arabic cognate that means “to be hot.” The illness is associated with Job (Job 2:7-8) and Hezekiah (Isa 38:21); it has also been connected with other skin diseases described especially in the Law. The word connected with it is אֲבַעְבֻּעֹת (’avabuot); this means “blisters, pustules” and is sometimes translated as “festering.” The etymology is debated, whether from a word meaning “to swell up” or “to overflow” (W. C. Kaiser, Jr., “Exodus,” EBC 2:359).

11 tn Grk “pains” (the same term in Greek [πόνος, ponos] as the last word in v. 11, here translated “sufferings” because it is plural). BDAG 852 s.v. 2 states, “ἐκ τοῦ π. in pain…Rv 16:10; pl. (Gen 41:51; Jos., C. Ap. 2, 146; Test. Jud. 18:4) ἐκ τῶν π. …because of their sufferings vs. 11.”

12 tn Or “ulcerated sores” (see 16:2).

13 tn Grk “and they did not repent.” Here καί (kai) has been translated as “but nevertheless” to express the contrast here.

14 tn Grk “they did not repent” The addition of “still refused” reflects the hardness of people’s hearts in the context.