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By studying the Hebrew text of the first seven verses of Job 3, you understand the way the author arranged his thoughts. This is not really evident in most English translations, as image tumbles over image in rapid and disordered succession. But the Hebrew order, at least, is fairly clear. After a two verse introduction which mentions the nature of Job's speech (a curse--kalal), there is what I call the "title verse"--Job 3:3. The first half of the verse wants the day to pass away, while the second half wants the night to vanish. Then, vv.4-5 speak of that day and vv.6-7 mention the night.

Within a few words of beginning the poetic section, then, the author has showed us that he knows how to organize tightly his poetry. This is a salutary warning, because the language he dips into in these five verses is more suggestive than sharp, more "searching" than "finding." The purpose of this essay is to explore some of Job's language in the exposition of "day" in Job 3:4-5. I will also bring in one word from v.7 which helps to "balance" the two sections.

Job and the Day, verse 4

Job first curses the day of his birth. The first and last words of vv.4-5 are "day" (yom). Scholars have had trouble translating the last phrase of verse 5, in which they try to link the words kimreray yom, usually translated as the "blackness of the day" (NRSV). I think a better way to look at the two verses is to see the first and last words almost as an inclusio or as sandwich words, so that the author is saying, "That day.......(yes) the day." This will help us, I think, as we get to the end of v.5.

I have already examined v.4 in a previous essay. Suffice it to say that it has three very rich phrases in Hebrew, each consisting of four words. The first is the reversal of God's words in Gen.1:3, "Let there be light." Job wants darkness to resile and claim all of creation. I have also commented on the second phrase, "let God not search it out from above." It strikes me that this phrase suggests that God "studies" the day like people are supposed to seek God or study Torah or seek justice. God provides the great example of study to the creatures. The third phrase, "may no light shine upon it," seems to be echoed in the last phrase of 10:22, where "it (light) shines as darkness."

Job and the Day, verse 5

Instead of three images in twelve words in v.4 we have three images in nine words in v.5. The barrage continues as Job wants light to be completely extinguished. Let's go over the images one at a time. I think it is helpful to focus on the three verbs that move the action. The first is "redeem" (gaal), translated as "claim" by the NRSV, but the notion of redemption ought not to be lost. The goel in Biblical speech is the one who redeems or buys back a member of the tribe who has become indebted to another. In the first phrase of v.5 Job is asking for the darkness and shadow of death (two words used together also in 10:21-22 and, surprisingly, in Is.9:1) to "redeem" or "buy back" the day. The image should make us pause because it assumes that the day, the light, the thing that is glorious about all creation, which God called into being by a word of command, really belongs to the darkness. Though Gen.1 might talk about the light emerging from chaos rather than darkness, Job has no qualms about suggesting that light's "father," so to speak, is darkness. 'Go back to the darkness-family where you belong,' is Job's approach. 'You, light, came from darkness. Return to the womb that bore you.' As might be expected, some of the most vivid appearances of gaal in the Hebrew Bible are in Deutero and Trito-Isaiah (8X). God will be the great redeeming force in that situation; here, Job wants darkness and the shadow of death to do the job.

The second phrase, "let the cloud settle upon it," is also suggestive. The Hebrew word for "settle" (shakan) is the verb used to illustrate God's presence with the people. God "tabernacled" with his people in the wilderness and the shekinah, the divine glory, followed the people throughout the wilderness wanderings and into the promised land. God settles among the people. But Job reverses all that. Instead of God "settling in" among the people, Job wants clouds to settle in on the day of his birth. Clouds obscure the light and are, in this passage, another word for darkness. Again, Job is skillful at reversing a most powerful image from the history of Israel.

Finally, he wishes that the night would terrify it (the day). Scholars are not in agreement regarding the translation of kimreray--but with Job stressing the darkness of life so much in these verses, a word like "darkness" or "eclipse" (Clines) is probably not too far wrong. He wants the darkness to terrify it (the day or light). The little verb terrify (baat) is rare in Biblical Hebrew. It only appears in the Piel (an intensive tense) 12 times, seven of which are in the Book of Job. In other words, Job is the book of terror, and Job wants the darkness to terrify the light. Later on he will speak of God terrifying him with dreams (7:14); it is only right that the darkness terrify the light.

Conclusion--Clouds and not Joy

Two words rhyme in the section from 3:3-7 that, it seems to me, capture the flow of Job's spirit perfectly. They are, in English, cloud and joy, but, in Hebrew, annanah and rannanah. Job wants clouds (annanah--v.4) to settle in on the day. He wants no joy, rannanah, to come into the night (v.7).

Here, then, is the brilliance of the opening gambit of Job's poetry. It is nicely balanced and ordered, between the day and the night, it is richly suggestive in using verbs that have deep biblical resonance, and it also throws in a rhyme for us to summarize the flow of Job's emotions. Now, who could NOT want to learn Hebrew after that??