Boil

Boil (rendered “botch” in the King James Version of Deut. 28:27, 35) refers to a severe skin ulcer or abscess. The sixth plague of Egypt consisted of boils breaking out on both humans and animals (Exod. 9:9–11), and the Mosaic covenant threatened boils among the covenant curses for disobedience (Deut. 28:27, 35). The most famous biblical boil is that afflicting Hezekiah during his near-fatal illness, treated on Isaiah's instruction with a poultice of figs that was applied to the boil, after which the king recovered (2 Kings 20:7; Isa. 38:21).

Job is afflicted with “loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head” (Job 2:7)—likely a severe skin disease involving painful sores—which he scrapes with a potsherd. The connection between disease and divine judgment or testing is woven through the biblical accounts of boils, while the healing narratives of Hezekiah and, in the New Testament, of various lepers and the sick, demonstrate God's power to restore what affliction has broken.