What Does Job 13:28 Mean in the King James?
And he, as a rotten thing, consumeth, as a garment that is moth eaten.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
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.
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.
“rotten” in this verse is raqav. 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 cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.Behold, the Lord GOD will help me; who is he that shall condemn me? lo, they all shall wax old as a garment; the moth shall eat them up.For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.THE THREAD
Behold, the Lord GOD will help me; who is he that shall condemn me? lo, they all shall wax old as a garment; the moth shall eat 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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