SKIN (עﯴר, H6425, גֵּ֫לֶד, H1654, בָּשָׂר, H1414, [flesh]; δέρμα, G1293, skin). The Bible tells of both animal skins and human skins. Animal skins were used to make clothes in the very early days (Gen 3:21). Rebekah used the skins of kids to put on Jacob’s hands and neck so that he would feel rough, like Esau, to his blind father (Gen 27:16). John the Baptist wore a leather girdle around his waist as one of his few garments (Mark 1:6).

If new wine is put into old wineskins “the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved” (Matt 9:17).

As the skin bottle grew old it lost its elasticity, becoming hard and brittle. New wine was still fermenting and the expansion caused by the resulting gases was easily accommodated by a new stretchable bottle. Obviously, the new wine would burst an old bottle. The point of the Lord’s parable is that an elastic mind able to receive a new thought, is like a new wine skin.

There are some references to human diseases of the skin. That Job in his affliction suffered from smallpox is a good possibility. He was afflicted with sores from head to toe, to the extent that his friends could not recognize him (Job 2). The condition was very itchy, for he scraped himself with a piece of broken pottery. He commented that “my skin hardens, then breaks out afresh” (Job 7:5). All this fits smallpox, although there are other possibilities.

Leprosy was a dreaded skin disease throughout the OT and NT. In the time of Moses, who had advanced ideas on preventive medicine, it was the duty of the priest to decide whether a man had active leprosy, which made it necessary for him to live apart from his people. The priest also had to decide if the disease was burned out. The criteria used in his examination of the patients are laid down in Leviticus 13. Christ cleansed ten lepers. This healing involved a restoring of the damaged parts of the body (Luke 17:11-19).

There are well-known proverbs concerning skin that come from the Bible. Job declared “I have escaped by the skin of my teeth” (Job 19:20). Jeremiah asked “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?” (Jer 13:23). See Tanner.