My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt; my skin hardens, then breaks out afresh.
Job is here excusing what he could not justify, even his inordinate desire of death. Why should he not wish for the termination of life, which would be the termination of his miseries? To enforce this reason he argues, I. From the general condition of man upon earth (Job 7:1): "He is of few days, and full of trouble.
Commenting on Job 7:1-6
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 was, his ulcers breeding worms, or lice, as some (y); these spread themselves over his body: some think it was the vermicular or pedicular disease...
In elephantiasis maggots are bred in the sores (Act 12:23; Isa 14:11). clods of dust--rather, a crust of dried filth and accumulated corruption (Job 2:7-8). my skin is broken and . . . loathsome--rather, comes together so as to heal up, and again breaks out with running matter [GESENIUS]. More simply the Hebrew is, "My skin rests (for a time) and (again) melts away" (Psa 58:7).