Language Studies

Difficult Sayings

More cursing in Job
Job 3:1,8; 31:30

"After this Job opened his mouth and cursed his day" (Job 3:1, lit. blessed — see the Difficult Sayings column on Job 2:9). Satan tried to induce Job to bless God to his face (Job 1:11; 2:5). Job’s wife encouraged him to get it over with, “bless God, and die” (Job 2:9). But Job did not sin (1:22; 2:10; 31:30) by cursing. So, we get a shock when we read that after seven days of silent mourning on an ash heap with his three friends (2:11-13) in his very next breath, or next chapter at least, “Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth” (3:1). Not only this but a little later he apparently calls upon professional cursers (cf. Jeremiah 9:17) to continue the job for him. Why the sudden change or seeming contradiction?

Despite the depressing content of this passage the poetry is beautiful. In 3:4-6, in asking for the day of his birth to have been darkness instead of light, Job uses 4 different words for the lack of light.

Job 3:8 mentions the raising of the sea monster Leviathan (Job 41:1; Psalms 74:14; 104:26; Isaiah 27:1) who was mythologically regarded, like Chinese and Indian dragons, as being able to swallow the sun and moon, further consuming the light and bringing on an eclipse.

It has been argued, and I was tempted to solve this verse similarly, that the “curse” words here are lexically different from those in chapters 1 and 2 in which Job resists “blessing God” and tries to cover for the possibility that his sons may have “blessed God” and sinned. In chapters 1 and 2 the Hebrew word used was בּרך bârakh (Strong's #1288) [see my Job 3:1 the word used is קלל qâlâl (Strong's #7043) that appears to have a lesser force and mean, “to esteem lightly, curse, or flow away”. For Job to have merely “looked lightly” upon the day of his birth would appear to be a lesser crime and certainly not tantamount to cursing God or his own birth.

“Blessing”, as in Deuteronomy 30:1, is often contrasted with qelâlâh “a curse” (Strong's #7045) or with the verb קלל qâlâl itself (Genesis 12:3; 27:29; Numbers 22:6,12; 24:9). Significantly, they are also contrasted in Jeremiah 20:14 in much the same language as that of Job:

“Cursed be the day in which I was born!
Let the day not be blessed in which my mother bore me!
Let the man be cursed Who brought news to my father, saying,
‘A male child has been born to you!’ Making him very glad.”

We cannot, however, get off so “lightly”, excuse the pun, with qâlâl for it us used interchangeably with the stronger term ערר ’ârâr “curse” (Strong's #779), for example in Exodus 22:28[Heb.v.27]:

“You shall not treat lightly (qâlâl) God, nor curse (’ârâr) a ruler of your people.”

So, despite some commentators pointing out that Job merely refers to others cursing (’ârâr) the day he virtually does the same himself in verse 1, albeit with a different word. Job, though, does draw a line, for in his own words, again with yet another different word for curse (עלה ’âlâh, Strong’s #423), he said:

“Indeed I have not allowed my mouth to sin by asking for a curse on his soul” (Job 31:30)

Job may curse the day, but he never cursed neither another soul nor his God and prayed for the souls of his sons who might have done the very sin he was incited to do. Furthermore he futilely only cursed that which was not capable of being cursed for qâlâl is nowhere else ever used of a thing and the thing Job chose was in the past and unchangeable. Voicing his regret over his birth just made him feel better, for a short while. If he moved from sighing to sinning then he signalled his repentance in 42:1-6 and God forgave him.

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KJ Went has taught biblical Hebrew, hermeneutics and Jewish background to early Christianity. The "Biblical Hebrew made easy" course can be found at www.biblicalhebrew.com.

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