Description and usage
The patch was a piece of cloth or leather sewed on clothing or shoes to repair a hole or tear.
Translation
JOS 9:5: The shoes of the Gibeonite messengers had been “patched” many times, that is, repaired with pieces of leather.
MAT 9:16 and MRK 2:21: The statement that “No one patches up an old coat with a piece of new cloth” (GNT) seems almost preposterous or incredible in some societies, since people habitually repair old clothing by putting on patches of new cloth, sometimes to the point where it is difficult to determine what was the original fabric. However, the Greek phrase rhakous agnafou, often translated “new cloth,” is literally “unshrunken cloth,” that is, cloth that has not been washed several times to shrink it (DUCL “patch that has never been shrunken”; similarly RSV, REB, NJB).