Job 2:7

7. Sore boils The word שׁחין , translated boils, in the verbal form signifies to be hot. Dr. Good, a learned physician, translates it “a burning ulceration.” That it was terrible is indicated by the addition of the word רע , ra’h, evil, or malignant. The features of the disease with which Job was afflicted most resemble the black leprosy, or elephantiasis, as it is called by the Greeks. It takes the latter name from its rendering the skin “scabrous, dark-coloured, and furrowed all over with tubercles,” ( Dr. Good;) or, as others say, because in some of its stages the feet swell, and take the shape of those of the elephant. The Arabians and Syrians call it the lion disease, ( leontiasis,) because of its producing in the countenance of the afflicted grim, distorted, and lion-like features. It is regarded as the most foul, painful, and incurable of all diseases. “It begins beneath the knee” ( W. Scholtze) with tubercular boils, which, in time, resemble a cancer, and thence spreads itself over the whole body. In its slow and destructive course all the members of the body, fingers, toes, hands, feet, gradually decay and fall off, on which account the Arabians call it also the maiming disease. The dread the disease inspires appears in the title it bears throughout the East “the first-born of death.” Its victim, even the Icelanders, among whom it prevails, say, resembles “a rancid, putrefying corpse.” Maundrell, an old but judicious Oriental traveller, describes the “distemper as so noisome that it might well pass for the utmost corruption of the human body on this side the grave.” The features and course of the disease may be traced in the incidental descriptions given by Job 3:24; Job 6:2; Job 6:4; Job 6:9; Job 6:11-14; Job 7:4-5; Job 7:14-15; Job 7:19; Job 9:17-18; Job 13:20; Job 13:27-28; Job 16:8; Job 16:16; Job 16:22; Job 17:1; Job 19:17-18; Job 19:20; Job 30:17; Job 30:30; Job 33:20. The entire diagnosis thus given answers to the elephantiasis.