Deuteronomy 28:27 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Ver. 27. The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, &c.— שׁחין shechin, rendered the botch, signifies an inflammatory swelling, a burning boil, a morbid tumour attended with a sense of heat. In Job 2:7 one of the versions of the Hexapla renders it the elephantiasis, a kind of leprosy. It is most probably the same malady mentioned Exodus 9:9. See Parkhurst on the word. Thevenot, in his Description of the Diseases of Egypt, mentions, among others, a kind of inflammation breaking out in pustules or botches, over all the skin, about the time of the Nile's beginning to overflow. By the emerods are meant those painful swellings in the hemorrhoidal vessels, which sometimes turn into ulcers. The word is nowhere found in Scripture, except here and 1 Samuel 5:6 : The superstitious vulgar of Egypt were made to believe, that these ulcers, &c. were inflicted by the goddess Isis, and their other idols. See Persius, sat. v. l. 186. and Juv. sat. xiii. l. 92.