Job invokes a curse on the day of his birth and the night of his conception—after the fact; and if he had to have been born, he wishes he had been born dead. Reversing the conventional, Job seeks death and darkness rather than life and light. In the ancient Near East in general women would recite incantations for ease of childbirth and the health of the newborn. Job employs a similar genre for an opposite purpose. Job reproaches the deity for exposing people to a life of suffering and remaining indifferent to their fate.
[3:1–2] After that Job opened up his mouth and cursed his day (of birth).
Up spoke Job and he said:
[3] Let the day disappear, the day I was born,1
And the night that announced: A man’s been conceived!2
[4] As for that day—Let it be darkness!3
May he not summon it, Eloah from on high;
May nothing luminous shine on it!
[5] Let darkness, dead-darkness, expunge it!4
Let hovering clouds engulf it!
Let daytime eclipses5 obscure it!
[6] As for that night—Let pitch-dark remove it!
May it have no part6 in the days of the year,
May it have no place in the count of the months!
[7] Yes, as for that night—Let it be sterile!7
May no joy (of love) take place on it!
[8] May they condemn it—the cursers of Yamm,8
Those armed with a curse9 for Leviathan!
[9] May the stars of the twilight turn dark,
That (the night) wait for the light—but there be none!
Let it see not a glimmer of dawn!
[10–12] For it would not lock the doors of my womb,10
And hide life’s travails from my eyes.
Why couldn’t I die after leaving the womb—
Just go out the loins and stop breathing?11
For what did knees have to receive me?12
For what were the breasts that I sucked?
[13–15] I could just have lain down in silence,
Slept and enjoyed my repose;
Together with kings and with counselors,
Who build palace-tombs13 for themselves.
Or with nobles, possessors of gold,
Who fill up their grave-homes with silver.
[16] Why couldn’t I be like a stillborn,
Just covered over (in the sand),
Like babies who never saw light?
[17–19] There (in the grave)—no more restless are the troubled;14
And there the failing of strength find repose.
All prisoners are (there) at peace;
They hear not the voice of their oppressor.
The small and the great, there are the same;
And a slave is set free from his master.
[20–22] Why give light to one in travail?
Or life to those bitter of spirit?—
Those waiting for death, but there is none,
Though they dig for it more than for treasure!15
Those singing for joy at the mouth of the tomb,16
Who are glad to be reaching the grave.
[23] (Why give light) to a man
Whose path is hidden from Eloah,17
Who screens him18 off from his19 sight?
[24] For my moans come to me like my bread,
And my growls are doled out like my water.
[25] A fear I have feared—and it’s come about;
Just what I dreaded befell me.
[26] I’ve had no rest, I’ve had no quiet,
I’ve had no repose—restlessness comes.
For many reasons the passage 4:12–21 should be read here, right after chapter 3, as the conclusion of Job’s opening speech. One may suppose that two pages of ancient papyrus or parchment containing the two equal halves of chapter 4 were accidentally interchanged in the course of the text’s transmission. In an oft-compared Babylonian composition about a pious sufferer (“I Shall Praise the Lord of Wisdom”) it is the complainant, not the would-be sage, who experiences a divine revelation. It is also Job the sufferer, not his companions, who receives a theophany near the end of the book. More important, in the ensuing chapters both Eliphaz and Job refer to Job’s claim to have enjoyed a revelation. Further, Eliphaz (in chapter 15) and Bildad (in chapter 25) cite the words of the revelation as Job’s, and Elihu, who engages only with the arguments of Job, quotes from it (33:15). These and other reasons for rearranging the two halves of chapter 4 will be indicated in the notes (see also Ken Brown). The renegade spirit that discloses divine secrets to Job recalls the Mesopotamian god Ea, who reveals the secret of the forthcoming deluge to the human flood hero (Weinfeld).
[4:12–14] Yet to me did a word come in stealth,
And my ear grasped a hint of it;20
In shudders from visions in the night,21
When slumber falls upon people.
Fear overcame me, and trembling;
As shivers set my bones to shaking.22
[15–16] For a spirit23 passed across my face;
It set the hair of my flesh on end.
It stood still, but I could not discern its demeanor,24
(Nor) the form in front of my eyes.
A moaning and voice25 did I hear:
[17–19] “Can a mortal be righteous before Eloah?26
Can a man be pure before his Maker?
If in his servants he puts no trust,
And in his angels he finds fault,27
Then all the more28 those who dwell in clay houses,29
Whose foundation is in the dust.30
They are quashed before twilight;31
[20] From day-break till evening they are crushed;
When it is not even nightfall32 they forever disappear.33
[21] Their tent-pin34 is pulled up on them;35
They die without (ever finding) knowledge.”36
1. “Day” is repeated in translation for reasons of prosody.
2. By referring to himself as “man” (geber) Job identifies himself with the “man” in verse 23 below; see also note 10. The term also designates a pious sufferer; see Lamentations 3:1 and Psalm 88:5; and compare Psalm 94:12.
3. A parody of “Let there be light!” (Genesis 1:3).
4. For ga’al “to disqualify,” see Ezra 2:62 (= Nehemiah 7:64; so for example M. Kimhi).
5. Kamrir means “darkening”; compare nikmar “charred” (see for example M. Kimhi).
6. Reading yeḥad, literally, “to be at one with,” with some traditional as well as modern commentators; for the same pair—ba’ and yaḥad—in parallelism, see Genesis 49:6.
7. The word for “sterile” also denotes, as in Arabic, a solitary crag (so Gordis, Book of Job). The image of the lone pillar reinforces our perception of Job’s sense of isolation.
8. The mythological sea monster that God had to restrain in creating the earth (for example Psalm 74:13–14; see further Job 38:8–11). Although the Hebrew word is vocalized yom, the word for “day,” the juxtaposition with Leviathan makes the primary reference clear. Yom is the Phoenician pronunciation of Yamm.
9. The verb ‘arar, cognate to Arabic ‘arra “to vilify,” is known in Hebrew in the form ‘ariri “disgraced” (see especially Jeremiah 22:30).
10. Job sees his mother’s womb as his own; see the introduction to this volume. In contrast to Jeremiah, who curses the day of his birth but mentions his father, his mother, and the messenger who brought the good news (20:14–18), Job will not refer to any person involved in his birth. He even refers to himself at birth as a “man” (verse 3), not a child.
11. Compare Ecclesiastes 4:3.
12. Probably the knees of the mother (Genesis 30:3), possibly those of the father or grandfather (see Genesis 48:12; 50:23). Job refers to disembodied limbs and not to the people to whom they belong.
13. Literally, “ruins”; but for ḥorabot one may read haramot “pyramids” (mr in Egyptian; harama in Arabic).
14. For this sense of rasha‘, ordinarily “wicked”—which is inapt here—see 34:29 (Ibn Ezra).
15. “Buried, covered over” treasure, echoing the “covered over” stillborn of verse 16 above.
16. Literally, at the stone “rolled across” the mouth of the tomb (compare golel in the Mishnah).
17. Drawing on Isaiah 40:27.
18. The man.
19. God’s.
20. Job spells out the apprehension to which he alluded in 3:25; compare 4:14, which resumes 3:25.
21. In 7:13–14 Job will blame God for giving him nightmares.
22. For rob “shivers” compare Akkadian rūbu and see Job 33:19 and 4:3 (with a slight revocalization). For the expression “bones shaking”—reading hirḥip for hipḥid—see Jeremiah 23:9 (Ginsberg, “Job the Patient”). In Hebrew script of all periods, d and r look alike.
23. An “angel” from the divine assembly, described in Job 1:6; 2:1; and elsewhere; see further 15:8.
24. Compare Job’s language in 9:11 to his language here and in verse 15 above.
25. “A moaning and a voice” echoes the phrase often rendered “still (small) voice” in the revelation to Elijah (1 Kings 19:12).
26. The preposition min can also be understood as “more than,” but so ironic a sense does not comport with the present context. For the usage of min found here, see Psalm 18:22, where the sense “more than” is impossible.
27. A borrowing from Arabic (Weber).
28. The expression ’ap is short for ’ap ki (as in the parallel passage 15:16); for the formula, “If …, then all the more so …,” see Deuteronomy 31:27; Proverbs 11:31.
29. A metaphor for the body.
30. Humans were created out of the dust of the earth; Genesis 2:7; see also Job 10:9; 32:6.
31. Compare Arabic ‘asā “evening” (Ginsberg, “Job the Patient”) and Hebrew ‘ashash “grow dark” in Psalm 6:8.
32. The participle of sim with prefixed mem is a ghost-word in pre-Mishnaic Hebrew. Revocalize mashayim, comparing Arabic masā’ “evening,” Late Hebrew ’emesh “last evening.”
33. This phrase together with “Let the day disappear” (3:3) frames Job’s first discourse.
34. Reading yetedam for yitram “their tent-cord” on the basis of Isaiah 33:20 (Luzzatto and others). The letters d and r look alike.
35. Life is figured here as a tent one puts up and takes down.
36. For the idea, compare Proverbs 5:23; 10:22.