The outer covering of the body. Diseased skin is often subject to pain and regarded as unclean.
Skin as the outer covering of the body
Job 10:10–11 See also Genesis 3:21, Genesis 27:11; Ezekiel 37:6, Ezekiel 37:8
Did You not pour me out like milk, and curdle me like cheese? You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews.
Violence against the skin
Micah 3:2–3 See also Job 2:4–5
You hate good and love evil. You tear the skin from my people and strip the flesh from their bones. You eat the flesh of my people after stripping off their skin and breaking their bones. You chop them up like flesh for the cooking pot, like meat in a cauldron.”
Skin and bones
Psalm 102:5 To be reduced to skin and bones is a mark of severe suffering. See also Numbers 4:8–14 animal skins used for covering the ark of the Testimony; Job 19:20; Lamentations 3:4, Lamentations 4:8
Through my loud groaning my skin hangs on my bones.
Skin diseases
Skin diseases are painful
Job 30:30 See also Job 7:5, Job 18:13; Lamentations 5:10
My skin grows black and peels, and my bones burn with fever.
They can be defiling
Numbers 5:2–3 See also Leviticus 13:1–11, Leviticus 13:43–46, Leviticus 22:4
“Command the Israelites to send away from the camp anyone with a skin disease, anyone who has a bodily discharge, and anyone who is defiled by a dead body. You must send away male and female alike; send them outside the camp so they will not defile their camp, where I dwell among them.”
As God's punishment for sin
Numbers 12:10–11 Miriam; 2 Kings 5:26–27 Naaman; 2 Chronicles 26:19–20 Uzziah
Healed by Jesus Christ
Matthew 8:2–3 parallels Mark 1:40–42, Luke 5:12–13; Luke 17:12–14
Skin cannot be changed
Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Neither are you able to do good — you who are accustomed to doing evil.
A person can know God even when the skin has been destroyed
Even after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. I will see Him for myself; my eyes will behold Him, and not as a stranger. How my heart yearns within me!
Related themes
Dictionary of Bible Themes © 1999 Martin Manser, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, via Bible Aquifer. Formatted for this site, with Scripture from the Berean Standard Bible.