Job 30:17-19

30:17 Night pierces ¹  my bones; ² 

my gnawing pains ³  never cease.

30:18 With great power God ⁴  grasps my clothing; ⁵ 

he binds me like the collar ⁶  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; ⁷ 

my body ⁸  is hot with fever. ⁹ 

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.

[30:17]  ¹ 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.”

[30:17]  ² 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.

[30:17]  ³ 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.

[30:18]  ⁴ tn Heb “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[30:18]  ⁵ 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.

[30:18]  ⁶ 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.”

[30:30]  ⁷ tn The MT has “become dark from upon me,” prompting some editions to supply the verb “falls from me” (RSV, NRSV), or “peels” (NIV).

[30:30]  ⁸ tn The word “my bones” may be taken as a metonymy of subject, the bony framework indicating the whole body.

[30:30]  ⁹ tn The word חֹרֶב (khorev) also means “heat.” The heat in this line is not that of the sun, but obviously a fever.

[9:9]  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 (’ava’bu’ot); 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).

[16:11]  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.”

[16:11]  ¹² tn Or “ulcerated sores” (see 16:2).

[16:11]  ¹³ tn Grk “and they did not repent.” Here καί (kai) has been translated as “but nevertheless” to express the contrast here.

[16:11]  ¹⁴ tn Grk “they did not repent” The addition of “still refused” reflects the hardness of people’s hearts in the context.