Job 7:5

My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust,.... Not as it would be at death, and in the grave, as Schmidt interprets it, when it would be eaten with worms and reduced to dust; but as it then

My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust; my skin is broken, and become loathsome. Clothed with worms. In elephantiasis maggots are bred in the sores. "Herod was eaten of worms" (Acts 12:23; Isaiah 14:11).

Clothed, i.e. covered all over as with a garment. With worms; which oft breed and break forth in divers parts of living bodies, as history and experience witnesseth, and which were easily bred out of Job’ s corrupted flesh and sores. Clods of dust; either the dust of the earth upon which he lay, which his sores would quickly lick up; or the scabs of his sores, which by degrees mouldered away into dust. My skin is broken, by ulcers breaking forth in all parts of it.

Job 7:5 My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust; my skin is broken, and become loathsome.Ver. 5. My flesh is clothed with worms] Here Job showeth how and whence his nights were so wearisome and restless; he was in his grave clothes before he died (saith Mr Caryl), viz. a gown of worms set or embroidered with clods of dust. Covered he was with sores, and putrefied ulcers full of worms, which made him abhorring to himself. And clods of dust] A fit dress for a dying man. The word signifieth the filings of any metal, or the scrapings of an unclean thing. He meaneth then the scurf, scraped off from him, or the dust contracted by his sitting upon the ground, Job 2:8. My skin is broken] Or, cleft and chapped (as the earth is in drought), in most loathsome and formidable manner. And become loathsome] Or melted, as in that distemper which physicians call corruptionem totius substantiae; or as in the leprosy or gangrene, when the flesh falleth off from the bones. Hinc igitur disce patientiam in morbis, saith Lavater. Hence, then, learn to be patient under the most noisome and troublesome diseases. What though thou be in such a pickle all over, that thou canst neither stand, nor walk, nor sit, nor lie, nor live, nor die: was not this holy Job’ s condition, and worse? Remember that there are not a few sick as heart can hold, sore all over, and want necessary food and physic which thou dost not; consider that God could, and justly might, lay more and heavier plagues upon thee, &c. When Dr Munster was sick, and some friends came to visit him, being very sorry for pains he was put to by the ulcers of his body; O my dear friends, said he, these boils and blains, gemmae sunt et pretiosa ornamenta Dei, are God’ s gems and jewels wherewith he adorneth his friends, that he may draw them to himself; which ornaments let us esteem far more precious than all the gold and wealth of this whole world. Soon after which speech he piously and peaceably fell asleep in the Lord. Craterus also, when he saw his body begin to swell with a dropsy, and other distempers, Euge Dee sit laus et gloria, said he, Oh, blessed be God, that my deliverance is at hand, et horula gratissima, and that sweet hour that shall put an end to all my miseries (Melch. Adam).

(5) With worms and clods of dust.—It is characteristic of Elephantiasis that the skin becomes hard and rugous, and then cracks and becomes ulcerated.

Verse 5. My flesh is clothed with worms] This is perhaps no figure, but is literally true: the miserably ulcerated state of his body, exposed to the open air, and in a state of great destitution, was favourable to those insects that sought such places in which to deposit their ova, which might have produced the animals in question. But the figure is too horrid to be farther illustrated. Clods of dust] I believe all the commentators have here missed the sense. I suppose Job to allude to those incrustations of indurated or dried pus, which are formed on the tops of pustules in a state of decay: such as the scales which fall from the pustules of the smallpox, when the patient becomes convalescent. Or, if Job's disease was the elephantiasis, it may refer to the furfuraceous scales which are continually falling off the body in that disorder. It is well known, that in this disease the skin becomes very rigid, so as to crack across, especially at the different joints, out of which fissures a loathsome ichor is continually exuding. To something like this the words may refer, My SKIN is BROKEN, and become LOATHSOME.

5. with worms and clods of dust] His ulcers bred worms; and the hard earthy-like crust of his sores he calls lumps of dust. is broken, and become loathsome] Rather, my skin closes and breaks afresh—the allusion being to the alternate gathering and running of his sores, which went on continually. Job 7:1-5 describe the pain of life; the following verses, 6–10, its brevity and utter extinction in death. There is no break, however, in the connexion, for it is the exhausting pains described in Job 7:3-5 that naturally suggest the hopeless brevity of his life. Job has been thought inconsistent in complaining that life being evil is also brief. But in his view life itself is the highest good; it should be free of evil and prolonged. And his complaint is that human life has been made by God both evil and brief; cf. ch. Job 14:1 seq.

My flesh is clothed with worms - Job here undoubtedly refers to his diseased state, and this is one of the passages by which we may learn the nature of his complaint; compare the notes at Job 2:7.

5. Worms — In the decaying sores, worms were engendered. “In cases of elephantiasis the body is covered with boils, in some of which maggots are bred, while others are covered over with a crust of