Franklin uses an exaggerated image to make a simple point: nothing can be taken from someone who has nothing left to take. A naked man has no clothes for even a hundred thieves to steal. The added phrase about his skin being off pushes the idea into deliberately dark absurdity, taking the meaning of being “stripped” to an impossible extreme.

Beneath the joke is an observation about possessions and vulnerability. Theft depends on a person having something that can be taken, so complete material deprivation paradoxically removes that particular risk. This does not present poverty as desirable or secure in a broader sense. Rather, Franklin uses comic exaggeration to show that loss has a natural limit: once everything is gone, further attempts to dispossess someone become meaningless. The saying can therefore be read as both a joke about thieves and a reflection on the relationship between ownership, loss and material vulnerability.