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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comFausset Bible Dictionary: Moth
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The clothes moth, Hebrew 'ash, Greek sees. ; "houses of clay crushed (as a garment) before the moth" (compare ); but Maurer, "crushed after the manner of the moth," whose lustrous satiny wings and body are soon crushed. The minute wasting of garments, stored up as they are in the East as wealth, by the larva which forms its own case out of the cloth material on which it feeds, is the chief point of similitude (-20; ); , "I will be unto Ephraim as a moth," gradually, silently, and surely consuming the nation's substance (; ).
The Tinea pellionella and Tinea biselliata still abound in Palestine. The order is the Lepidoptera. Job says of the man enriched by wrong, () "he buildeth his house as a moth," whose house, in and of the garment, is broken, so frail is it whenever the garment is shaken out. The moth chooses for laying its egg a garment under cover, rather than one exposed and in use. The young one chooses the longer hairs for the outside, the shorter for the interior, of its oblong case; it finishes it within with closely woven silk. When needed, it enlarges the case by pieces inserted in the sides. Only when the case is complete it begins to eat. It chooses for food the shortest and thickest fibers, eating into the body of the cloth and rejecting the nap.