What Does Job 13:28 Mean?
And he wears thin like rot, like a garment the moth eats.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And he, as a rotten thing, consumeth, as a garment that is moth eaten.THE KEY
The word translated “consumeth” carries the sense of wearing out, so the person and the moth-eaten garment share one image of gradual decay.
THE MEANING
The image names decay without disguise: the person wears away like rot, while a moth consumes a garment. Mortality reaches what feels most material and familiar, the body that carries you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that bodily integrity is permanent is undone here; the person is pictured as already wearing away.
THE ROOT
יִבְלֶה
yivleh
GROWS FROM
בלה
balah
To wear out, grow old, or decay.
“wears thin” in this verse is yivleh. The verb points to wearing away over time, giving “consumeth” the texture of something that gradually frays. The garment image makes that process visible and familiar.
ALSO GROWS
balah: To wear out or grow old.
בָּלָה
This verb names the gradual wearing that gives the verse’s image its force.
yivlu: They wear out or grow old.
יִבְלוּ
Isaiah uses this form for people who wax old like a garment, echoing the verse’s image.
רָקָב
raqav
GROWS FROM
רקב
raqav
To rot or decay.
This root makes the description more concrete than general weakness: it places the person in the language of rot. Beside the image of wearing out, it gives two overlapping pictures of deterioration.
ALSO GROWS
raqav: To rot or decay.
רָקַב
The verb expresses the deterioration pictured in the person’s comparison to rot.
raqav: Rot, decay, or rottenness.
רָקָב
This noun names the decayed condition directly, rather than describing a passing weakness.
אֲכָלוֹ
akhalo
GROWS FROM
אכל
akhal
To eat or consume.
English makes “moth eaten” sound like a settled condition, while the Hebrew clause presents the moth as eater: the garment is being consumed. The root connects eating with food and what is eaten, making consumption an action in the image.
ALSO GROWS
akhal: To eat or consume.
אָכַל
The verb names what the moth does to the garment.
okhel: Food or something eaten.
אֹכֶל
This related noun shows the same root’s connection between the act of eating and what is consumed.
ma'akhal: Food or an edible thing.
מַאֲכָל
This branch extends the image from eating to the thing made subject to consumption.
THE PATTERN
Human life in its visible, bodily form is pictured as something that wears away rather than remaining intact.
He comes forth like a blossom and is cut off; he flees also like a shadow, and does not stand.Behold, the Lord GOD will gird me. Who is he who will condemn me? Behold, they all wear out like a garment, and the moth eats them up.Therefore we do not give out; though our outer person is worn through, yet our inner person is made new day after day.THE THREAD
Behold, the Lord GOD will gird me. Who is he who will condemn me? Behold, they all wear out like a garment, and the moth eats them up.Job’s “consumeth” and Isaiah’s “wax old” share the root for wearing out; Isaiah then repeats the pairing of garment and moth. Together they reveal a recurring scriptural image of human life as something that can be worn down and eaten away.
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