What Does Job 7:5 Mean in the King James?
My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust; my skin is broken, and become loathsome.
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
Decay does not stand outside the body here; it becomes the clothing the body wears.
THE MEANING
Here, suffering reaches the body’s surface: flesh is covered with worms and clods of dust, skin is broken, and the body becomes loathsome. The verse holds bodily damage in direct language, without disguising it as something else.
THE ROOT
לָבַשׁ
lāvaš
GROWS FROM
לבש
To clothe, put on, or wear.
“clothed” in this verse is lāvaš. The verse turns the ordinary image of wearing clothes inside out: worms and dust are what the flesh wears. The body has no protective separation from decay; its covering is part of the affliction.
ALSO GROWS
levush: Garment, clothing.
לְבוּשׁ
The noun makes the verse’s clothing image concrete: worms and dust become the garment covering the flesh.
hilbish: To clothe someone.
הִלְבִּישׁ
This form shows the root can describe clothing placed on another; here, what covers the body is itself a source of suffering.
וַיִּמָּאֵס
vayyimmāʾēs
GROWS FROM
מאס
To reject, refuse, or despise.
“loathsome” in this verse is vayyimmāʾēs. English presents loathsomeness as a quality, while the Hebrew root also carries the sense of rejection or refusal. It gives the body’s condition the force of something that provokes turning away.
ALSO GROWS
maʾas: To reject or refuse.
מָאַס
This verb reveals the root’s active sense beneath the body’s state of being loathsome.
maʾus: Rejected, despised, or abhorrent.
מָאוּס
This form brings the rejection and revulsion close to the description of the damaged body.
THE PATTERN
The body remains earthbound: scripture names dust as both its material and a sign of its fragility.
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.THE THREAD
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.Job 7:5 puts עָפָר (ʿāfār, dust or soil) on the skin as clods. Genesis 3:19 uses that same word for what the human is and what the human returns to, so the dust on the surface echoes the body’s material and destination.
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