Deuteronomy 28:27

Verse Deuteronomy 28:27. The Lord will smite thee with the botch] שחין shechin, a violent inflammatory swelling. In Job 2:7, one of the Hexapla versions renders it ελεφας, the elephantiasis, a disease the most horrid that can possibly afflict human nature. In this disorder, the whole body is covered with a most loathsome scurf; the joints are all preternaturally enlarged, and the skin swells up and grows into folds like that of an elephant, whence the disease has its name. The skin, through its rigidity, breaks across at all the joints, and a most abominable ichor flows from all the chinks, c. See an account of it in Aretaeus, whose language is sufficient to chill the blood of a maniac, could he attend to the description given by this great master, of this most loathsome and abominable of all the natural productions of death and sin. This was called the botch of Egypt, as being peculiar to that country, and particularly in the vicinity of the Nile. Hence those words of Lucretius: -

Est Elephas morbus, qui circum flumina Nili

Nascitur, AEgypto in media nec praeterea usquam.

Lib. vi., ver. 1112.

Emerods] עפלים ophalim, from עפל aphal, to be elevated, raised up; swellings, protuberances; probably the bleeding piles.

Scab] גרב garab does not occur as a verb in the Hebrew Bible, but [Arabic] gharb, in Arabic, signifies a distemper in the corner of the eye, (Castel.,) and may amount to the Egyptian ophthalmia, which is so epidemic and distressing in that country: some suppose the scurvy to be intended.

Itch] חרס cheres, a burning itch, probably something of the erysipelatous kind, or what is commonly called St. Anthony's fire.

Whereof thou canst not be healed.] For as they were inflicted by GOD'S justice, they could not of course be cured by human art.