Boil

A boil is a tumor of the flesh — an inflamed swelling that breaks open into a sore. In the UPDV the word arrives in three settings: as a judgment-plague (Egypt, the covenant curses, Philistia, Job), as a Levitical diagnostic problem (the priest must decide whether a healed boil has turned into leprosy), and as the affliction Hezekiah is healed of by a fig poultice. The boil is rarely just a medical fact in the text; it is a sign — of the hand of Yahweh on a nation, of Satan's malignant work on a righteous man, of the seriousness of skin disease in the camp.

The Plague on Egypt

The sixth plague comes when Moses and Aaron, at Yahweh's word, take ashes from a furnace and Moses sprinkles them toward heaven. The dust does not stay dust:

"And it will become small dust over all the land of Egypt, and will be a boil breaking forth with sores on man and on beast, throughout all the land of Egypt" (Ex 9:9).

The execution follows the announcement word for word: "And they took ashes of the furnace, and stood before Pharaoh; and Moses sprinkled it up toward heaven; and it became a boil breaking forth with sores on man and on beast" (Ex 9:10). The same language — "boil breaking forth with sores" — covers prediction and event, marking the plague as an act of judgment carried out through Moses and Aaron, on man and on beast alike.

The Curses of the Covenant

The plague that struck Egypt becomes a covenant threat held over Israel. In the curses of Deuteronomy 28, the boil reappears by name as "the boil of Egypt":

"[The Speech of] Yahweh will strike you with the boil of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scurvy, and with the itch, of which you can't be healed" (De 28:27).

A few verses later the curse is intensified to a head-to-foot affliction:

"[The Speech of] Yahweh will strike you in the knees, and in the legs, with an intense boil, of which you can't be healed, from the sole of your foot to the top of your head" (De 28:35).

Both verses repeat the same finality — "of which you can't be healed" — placing the boil among the irreversible curses for breach of covenant. The Egyptian plague is now the standing threat over a disobedient Israel.

The Tumors of the Philistines

When the captured ark is brought to Ashdod, Yahweh strikes the Philistines with the same kind of bodily affliction filed under "boil" (the older versions render the Hebrew as "tumors"):

"But the hand of Yahweh was heavy on them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them, and struck them with tumors, even Ashdod and its borders" (1Sa 5:6).

When the ark is moved on, the affliction moves with it. At Gath:

"And it was so, that, after they had carried it about, the hand of Yahweh was against the city with a very great discomfiture: and he struck the men of the city, both small and great; and tumors broke out on them" (1Sa 5:9).

The Philistine diviners read the pattern correctly and counsel a guilt-offering of golden replicas of the very afflictions sent on them:

"Therefore you⁺ will make images of your⁺ tumors, and images of your⁺ mice that mar the land; and you⁺ will give glory to the God of Israel: perhaps he will lighten his hand from off you⁺, and from off your⁺ gods, and from off your⁺ land" (1Sa 6:5).

Across the three verses the same phrase recurs: the hand of Yahweh is what is heavy, what strikes, what they hope will be lightened. The boils-or-tumors are the visible sign of that hand on a foreign nation that has taken his ark.

The Affliction of Job

The pattern of plague-as-sign continues, but now turned against a righteous man rather than an enemy or a disobedient nation. The book opens the affliction this way:

"So Satan went forth from the presence of Yahweh, and struck Job with intense boils from the sole of his foot to the top of his head" (Job 2:7).

The phrase "from the sole of his foot to the top of his head" matches the Deuteronomy curse exactly, but the agent has shifted: Satan is the one who strikes, with permission. Job's response is to accept what the curse-language said could not be done — to live with the unhealable:

"And he took for himself a potsherd to scrape himself with it; and he sat among the ashes" (Job 2:8).

The boil here is not a verdict against Job's covenant standing. It is the malignant work of Satan acting against the righteous, and Job's potsherd-and-ashes posture is the picture of the godly enduring it.

Hezekiah's Boil and the Cake of Figs

When Hezekiah falls mortally sick, the cure is not a miraculous word but a poultice:

"And Isaiah said, Take a cake of figs. And they took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered" (2Ki 20:7).

The cake of figs is a remedy applied to the boil; Isaiah prescribes it, but the recovery is recorded as a miracle of Isaiah and as part of the larger sign-narrative of Hezekiah's added years. The Isaiah parallel (Isa 38:21) is not preserved in the UPDV main text — the ASV-era reading is treated as a likely secondary addition — so the Kings account stands alone for this episode.

The Levitical Diagnostic

In the cleanness law of Leviticus 13, a boil that has healed is a known site for something worse to break out. The procedure is a step-by-step priestly inspection:

"And when the flesh has a boil on it, and it is healed, and in the place of the boil there is a white rising, or a bright spot, reddish-white, then it will be shown to the priest" (Le 13:18, 19).

The priest then makes the first call by the appearance of the spot:

"And the priest will look; and see if its appearance is lower than the skin, and its hair has turned white, then the priest will pronounce him unclean: it is the plague of leprosy, it has broken out in the boil" (Le 13:20).

If the diagnostic markers are absent, the priest does not yet decide, but quarantines:

"But if the priest looks at it and sees there are no white hairs in it, and it is not lower than the skin, but is dim; then the priest will shut him up seven days" (Le 13:21).

After the seven days the verdict turns on whether the spot has spread:

"And if it spreads abroad in the skin, then the priest will pronounce him unclean: it is a plague" (Le 13:22).

"But if the bright spot remains in its place, and has not spread, it is the scar of the boil; and the priest will pronounce him clean" (Le 13:23).

A boil that has healed is therefore not closed business: the site can become a scar, or it can become "the plague of leprosy . . . broken out in the boil." The legislation gives the priest a procedure — look, quarantine, look again, declare — for telling them apart.

Through the Whole Pattern

Across these passages the boil holds together a single picture. It is the Egyptian plague raised over Israel as a covenant curse and laid on the Philistines who hold the ark; it is the affliction Satan is permitted to inflict on Job; it is the disease Hezekiah is healed from by a fig poultice; and it is the medical event that the priests must inspect because what looks like a healed boil can be the beginning of leprosy. The boil's role in the UPDV is less anatomical than judicial — it is the body marked, by the hand of Yahweh or the hand of Satan, in a way the people around the sufferer are meant to read.