service to God. (Rom. 12:1) This requires the use of reason and the maintenance of the body with food and other necessities along with physical cleanliness, but other types of care are even more important. These involve spirituality, seeking God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and the practice of moral uprightness. (Matt. 6:25, 31-33; Col. 2:20-23; 3:5) The apostle counsels: “Bodily training is beneficial for a little; but godly devotion is beneficial for all things, as it holds promise of the life now and that which is to come.”—1 Tim. 4:8.

One who is a member of the Christian congregation, the body of Christ, and who commits fornication, is taking a member of the Christ away and making it a member of a harlot. Any Christian committing fornication not only is bringing in moral defilement but is also “sinning against his own [fleshly] body.” He is putting himself in peril of being removed from the body of Christ, the temple organization, and is exposing himself to the danger of syphilis and other venereal diseases. (1 Cor. 6:13, 15-20; Prov. 7:1-27) He may be ‘handed over by the congregation to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.’—1 Cor. 5:5.

One who is a member of the body of Christ, as well as other dedicated persons who are associated with these spiritually begotten body members, must also avoid spiritual fornication. The Scriptures call one who has friendship with the world an ‘adulteress.’ (Jas. 4:4) Jesus said of his disciples: “They are no part of the world, just as I am no part of the world.” (John 17:16) Therefore, Jesus is careful that those who make up the members of his body are clean morally and spiritually. (Eph. 5:26, 27) They are said to have their “bodies bathed with clean water.” (Heb. 10:22) As the apostle Paul says, speaking of human husbands: “In this way husbands ought to be loving their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no man ever hated his own flesh; but he feeds and cherishes it, as the Christ also does the congregation, because we are members of his body. ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and he will stick to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This sacred secret is great. Now I am speaking with respect to Christ and the congregation.”—Eph. 5:28-32; see parts of the body under their individual headings.

BODYGUARD

See CARIAN BODYGUARD; GUARD.

BOHAN

(Boʹhan) [thumb, stumpy].

1. A descendant of Reuben after whom a boundary stone for the territory of Judah was named.—Josh. 15:6; 18:17.

2. “The stone of Bohan” served as a boundary marker for the tribes of Benjamin and Judah. (Josh. 15:6; 18:17) It lay near the NW corner of the Salt Sea and evidently toward the foot of the plateau-like Low Plain of Achor.—See ACHOR.

BOIL

Generally, a furuncle, a localized, painful swelling of the skin resulting, not from a previous wound, but from infection caused by bacteria that invade hair follicles or sweat or sebaceous glands. Beginning with a small red swelling, the boil eventually discharges some pus and, subsequently, its hard center core. At times, a number of boils develop in an affected area. A “carbuncle” is more dangerous than a furuncle, covers a larger area, sometimes produces greater pain and may be attended by such symptoms as headache, fever and prostration. It is sometimes fatal.

The Hebrew word sh^ehhinʹ, translated “boil,” is derived from a root that probably means “to burn.” Sh^ehhinʹ can denote a “boil,” an “eruption,” an “inflamed spot” or an “inflamed ulcer.”

At the time of Jehovah’s sixth blow against Egypt, the Egyptians and their beasts were plagued by painful “boils with blisters.” (Ex. 9:8-11) These may have been severe raised skin eruptions filled with pus, and such blisterlike pustules possibly covered a large area. However, the brief Scriptural description makes definite identification with a specific modern-day disorder impossible.

The Israelites were warned that the consequences of disobedience to God would include his striking them with the “boil of Egypt.” It was further said: “Jehovah will strike you with a malignant boil [combining Heb. sh^ehhinʹ, “boil,” and raʽ, “malignant, noxious”] upon both knees and both legs, from which you will not be able to be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head.”—Deut. 28:15, 27, 35.

The Law indicated that a healed boil might be the place of development of a leprous eruption or blotch. In some cases, the symptoms were such that the victim was immediately declared unclean and leprous; in others, a seven-day quarantine was imposed. If it was thereafter found that the condition had not spread, it was identified merely as “the inflammation of the boil” and the priest pronounced the person clean.—Lev. 13:18-23.

Satan struck Job “with a malignant boil [Heb., sh^ehhinʹ raʽ] from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.” (Job 2:7) It has often been suggested that Job was afflicted with black leprosy, or elephantiasis (so named because the victim’s swollen limbs and darkened, scabrous skin look somewhat like those of an elephant), though various other diseases have also been suggested. Among other things, the Scriptures disclose that in agony Job scraped himself with a fragment of earthenware (2:8) and that his flesh was covered with maggots, his skin formed crusts (7:5), his breath was loathsome (19:17), he was wracked with pain and his skin blackened and dropped off. (30:17, 30) Still, such symptoms do not make possible a positive identification of Job’s malady with a specific present-day disease.

King Hezekiah of Judah was afflicted with a “boil” (Heb., sh^ehhinʹ) and “got sick to the point of dying.” At Isaiah’s suggestion, a cake of pressed dried figs was applied to the boil as a poultice, after which Hezekiah gradually revived. (2 Ki. 20:1, 7; Isa. 38:1, 21) Some have conjectured that Hezekiah had a carbuncle, which can be fatal. Since a carbuncle has been defined, in part, as “a group of adjacent furuncles” (The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, 10th ed., p. 1438) and the Hebrew word sh^ehhinʹ can denote an “inflamed spot” or an “eruption,” perhaps Hezekiah’s boil was of this type. Nonetheless, his recovery was due, not to natural healing alone, but to cure by Jehovah.—2 Ki. 20:5.

BOND

A thing that confines or restrains from liberty, as a fetter or chain, a shackle; manacle; also confinement (plural); a binding force or influence; a cause of union; a uniting tie.

In Bible times various means were employed for restraint of prisoners, including fetters, stocks, shackles and handcuffs as well as prison houses. Egyptian bas-reliefs show prisoners with elbows bound together with cords, either in front, behind or over the head. Sometimes the wrists are bound, and all the prisoners are tied together by a cord encircling the neck of each. Others are wearing wooden manacles apparently made of two pieces of wood fastened together, with rectangular openings for the wrists. Manacles varied in construction; they were often suspended from the prisoner’s neck by a cord. In some Egyptian reliefs the prisoners are bound differently according to their nationality. Assyrian reliefs depict prisoners with shackles consisting of rings or bands around the ankles fastened together by a bar.

In the Scriptures, the Hebrew word for “copper” (usually plural in such cases) is frequently translated “fetters,” according to the context, because fetters were often made of copper or bronze, although wood and iron were also employed. In the British Museum there is a pair of bronze fetters from Nineveh in the form of a bar with a ring at each