“Let That Day Be Darkness!”: Creation Reversal in Job 3:1–10

Introduction

Job 3 is the gateway into the poetic dialogues of the Joban saga—the “meat” of the book, if you will. It is only the third time so far that we hear Job speak, and what we hear is deeply disturbing and unsettling, especially in light of the tone and character of his previous speech. Shockingly, Job 3 turns out to be a “scathing complaint.”¹ The Job that worshiped God in his anguish (1:21) and rebuked his wife for her suggestion to “curse God and die” (2:10) now curses(!) the “day of his birth” (3:1) and wishes to die(!) in his imprecation in 3:1-10. Through a brilliant demonstration of poetic intensification,² this first section of Job 3 follows a creation reversal motif, which functions to arrest God’s attention and provoke him to act on Job’s behalf, ultimately to give him rest (3:13, 17, 26).

Exegesis

Job 3 begins with Job opening his mouth (3:1), which continues the emphasis on Job’s speech that was begun in the prologue (chs. 1-2). Up to this point we know that Job “did not sin with his lips” (2:10), but as we begin to hear what Job has to say, we wonder if he has now crossed the line. With Lindsay Wilson we ask, “Will Job now curse God as asserted by the accuser (1:11; 2:5) and as encouraged by his wife (2:9)?”³ Job “opened his mouth,” not in a hymn of worship nor to rebuke a naysayer, but to utter a “curse” on “the day of his birth.” The object of the curse is ambiguous in the Hebrew, which literally reads as “his day” (יוֹמוֹ), which could also be taken to mean his fate. So what exactly is Job cursing: his birthday or his fate? The other uses of this form (יוֹמוֹ) in Job (15:32; 18:20) and in other OT books (1 Sam. 26:10; Ezek. 21:30 [21:25]; Ps. 37:13) suggest that we should understand “his day” as “his fate,” not “his birthday,” as most translators prefer.⁴ Job is most likely cursing his fate, and thus, the problem Job has is the suffering that he is experiencing. This reading helps define his exigency in terms of his suffering, not God’s action in bringing him to life, which in turn, helps us to identify Job’s rhetorical goal: the alleviation of his suffering (= “rest”).

After the prose introduction in the narrator’s voice, the content of Job’s curse from his own mouth begins to take shape in the first section of chapter three (vv. 3-10), striking a sharp imprecatory tone. The structure of the poem is tight, with v. 3 and v. 10 in careful balance with one another.⁵ The day versus night motif is introduced in 3:3, and then each is developed in turn in vv. 4-5 (“that day”) and vv. 6-9 (“that night”). The overall literary-thematic motif of this section is the undoing of creation (creation reversal, de-creation). Michael Fishbane has demonstrated that there is a “fairly systematic” correspondence between the order of Job 3 (esp. vv. 3-13) and the original creation week.⁶ Allusion to a similar creation reversal lament in Jeremiah 20:14-18 provides strong evidence for this creation correspondence.⁷ One significant element of correspondence is the framing of both poems: both the original creation poem and Job’s lament begin with “day,” “light,” and “darkness” (Job: 3:4-5; Gen. 1:3-5) and end with the theme of “rest” (Job 3:13-19; Gen. 2:2-3). Even without further correspondence, this in itself is enough to warrant the claim that there is an intentional allusion to the original creation order,⁸ albeit to be used in poetic juxtaposition by Job for the purpose of lament. But thematic correspondence is not the only kind at play. Job’s speech also invokes the same ethos of the power of speech that is at work in the original creation,⁹ dramatically illustrated by Job’s declaration, “Let that day be darkness!” (Job 3:4; alt., “Let there be darkness!”) versus “Let there be light!” (Gen. 1:3). A more granular analysis reveals further correspondences, as Job’s desire to reverse creation is difficult to miss. The move from chaos to order is being inverted in Job’s curse: he wants the day to be made night and light to become darkness, which would overwhelm the “day,” the day being the measure by which “months” and “years” are defined and calculated, rendering time itself an unreality (3:5-6). What is more, Job goes so far as to invoke Leviathan, the great chaos monster, to overrun its boundaries set by God at creation and to do its work of destroying the ordered world (3:8). The creation of man (Gen. 1:26-27) is undone in Job’s wish that he would have been stillborn or miscarried (3:10-12). Moving beyond the imprecation of 3:1-10, we see that Job makes an appeal for Sabbath (Gen. 2:1-3). This turns out not to be a living rest, but rather a Sabbath of the grave (3:13-19). These correspondences, taken together with the allusion to Jeremiah 20:14-18, make a strong cumulative case for a creation reversal motif in Job 3:1-10 (and into the rest of Job 3).

Situating Job 3:1-10

The transition from Job 2 to Job 3 marks a significant developmental shift in the book, where the reader is “suddenly plunged out of the epic grandeur and deliberateness of the prologue into the dramatic turmoil of the poetry.”¹⁰ This shift is not simply to add dramatic flair to Job’s complaint in his suffering, though it certainly does that. It, more importantly, “establishes the terms, literally and figuratively, for the poetry Job will speak throughout,”¹¹ providing a sort of poetic lexicon for the rest of the book, especially for the Yahweh speeches at the end, where the images and vocabulary come full circle in their use by the poet. Clines recognizes this same quality in chapter 3, but at the narrative level: “Job’s curse is, as Habel has well written, an event, integral to the plot of the narrative of the book as a whole.”¹² In rendering verse 1 as “in the end it was Job who broke the silence,” the Jerusalem Bible dovetails chapter 3 back into the narrative of chapter 2, taking the phrase “after that” (אחרי כן) to be a conjunctive rather than a disjunctive.¹³ In short, Job 3 is integral for both the poetic and narrative integrity of the book.

The transition reveals a detectable difference in the literary mode (genre and style) between the prologue and Chapter 3: a prose prologue versus a poetic dialogue (though the dialogical element is implied at this point, but becomes more clear as the book progresses). Robert Alter describes this literary transition with a heightened awareness of the artistry of the transition: “…the prose of the frame-story switches into altogether remarkable poetry.”¹⁴ There is also a notable difference in Job’s tone and tact: sitting in silence versus opening his mouth and cursing.¹⁵ At the rhetorical level, this abrupt shift in Job 3 “opens up a significant gap in the characterization of Job.”¹⁶ What has changed in him? What explains the difference? This gapping invites reflection as the book progresses.

Furthermore, Chapter 3 constitutes Job’s first speech and introduces the first speech cycle. As the dialogue progresses, it becomes clear that Job’s first speech “launches the dispute between Job and his friends.”¹⁷ Wilson notes that “the place of the curse in the flow of the book is significant” because it provokes a response from the friends.¹⁸ This is not a monologue, but a speech given in the presence of the friends and before God, himself. Later we will discover that these two audiences are also the respective sources of Job’s two exigencies: the friends’ “comforter malpractice”¹⁹ and his suffering caused by God.

Theological Reflection

Job’s world has been undone. The experiential world he now inhabits is at odds with how he understands the world to be according to the original creation spoken into existence by God—the same God who has now afflicted Job in his righteousness. Job “falls asleep” in his mourning and wakes up to a world that is upside down. In our overly pious response to Job’s seemingly impious curse in the form of creation reversal, we must be careful not to miss the sheer angst in Job’s situation: he is an innocent sufferer, whose suffering is on a scale beyond what most can imagine. Job’s position as an innocent sufferer constrains the mode of his speech. This curse is not addressed to God directly, and should not be taken as a literal death-wish, as easy as it may be to slide into that interpretation. Rather, “it is primarily a cry from the heart, a call of extreme frustration,” not an “efficacious curse.”²⁰ Toby Sumpter suggests that if we were to translate Job’s first speech into colloquial English, “Job is saying something like, ‘God damn my life, this world, everything.’”²¹

Moreover, the move from order to chaos in Job’s experience hints at the question of God’s justice, which will become a central theological question throughout the dialogues. But here in the imprecation of 3:1-10, more narrowly in view, it seems that it is God’s wisdom, not his justice, that is being inverted. This becomes clear upon a careful reflection of how Chapter 38, Yahweh’s first speech, “was purposefully articulated as a grand reversal of the poem in Chapter 3,”²² which functions as a kind of meta-reversal that sets things back in their proper order for Job.

Conclusion

True faith desires right relationship with God. Job’s relationship to God has been severed, not by his own doing, but by God’s. Job’s response is not passive or apathetic—he engages God in his innocent suffering, and does so in a deeply provocative way, asking that creation itself be reversed. But his lament is actually a bold act of faith, one that will ultimately lead him to a place of greater maturity and blessing. Through his tenacity, he will come to discover “how the terms of God’s poetry—which is to say, ultimately, His imagination of the world—transcend the terms of Job’s poetry and that of the Friends.”²³

Bibliography

Alter, Robert. The Art of Biblical Poetry. Basic Books, 2011.

Clines, David J. A. Job 1-20. Vol. 17. Word Biblical Commentary. Zondervan, 1989.

Pohl, William C. Ethical God-Talk in the Book of Job: Speaking to the Almighty. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 698. T&T Clark, 2020.

Sumpter, Toby J. Job Through New Eyes: A Son for Glory. Athanasius Press, 2012.

Wilson, Lindsay. Job. Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary. Eerdmans, 2015.

Yu, Charles. “To Comfort Job: The Speeches in the Book of Job as Rhetorical Discourse.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2011.

Footnotes

1. William C. Pohl, Ethical God-Talk in the Book of Job: Speaking to the Almighty, Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 698 (T&T Clark, 2020), 44. ↩

2. Robert Alter speaks glowingly of the masterful poetry that is the Book of Job and particularly, its masterful employment of “intensification,” especially in Job 3: “In several ways the most profound development of the structures of intensification occurs in what is arguably the greatest achievement of all biblical poetry, the Book of Job. […] …[I]n Chapter 3, we are plunged precipitously into a world of what must be called abysmal intensities.” (Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (Basic Books, 2011), 92) [italics mine]. ↩

3. Lindsay Wilson, Job, Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary (Eerdmans, 2015), 42. ↩

4. “Job’s ‘day’ (יומו) that he cursed is almost universally taken to be the day of his birth (so, eg, RSV, NEB, JB, NIV), in view of the subsequent verse. But the normal Hebrew for one’s birth–day is יוֹם הִוָּלְדוֹ (Eccl 7:1; cf Hos 2:5; Gen 40:20) and ‘day’ by itself nowhere else means the day of one’s birth; it is perhaps better to regard his ‘day’ as equivalent to his life (cf 30:25 ‘one hard of day,’ one whose life is hard, BDB, 399a § 4a), or his unhappy fate (similarly Budde), perhaps even as meaning the day of his disaster (as 18:20; Jer 50:31; 1 Sam 26:10; Ezek 21:30; Ps 37:13).” David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary (Zondervan, 1989), 17:79. ↩

5. Wilson, Job, 43, referencing D. N. Freedman, “The Structure of Job 3,” Biblica 49 (1968): 503–8. ↩

6. Toby J. Sumpter, Job Through New Eyes: A Son for Glory (Athanasius Press, 2012), 78. Sumpter references Michael Fishbane, “Jeremiah IV 23-26 and Job III 3-13: A Recovered Use of the Creation Pattern,” Vetus Testamentum 21, No. 2 (April 1971), 151-67. ↩

7. For an argument in favor of the dependence of Job 3 on Jeremiah 20:14-18, see (Pohl, Ethical God-Talk in the Book of Job, 55–56). ↩

8. Sumpter, Job Through New Eyes, 78. ↩

9. Fishbane, 154-55ff. ↩

10. Wilson, Job, 77. ↩

11. Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry, 92. ↩

12. Clines, Job 1-20, 17:78. ↩

13. Clines, Job 1-20, 17:78. ↩

14. Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry, 105. ↩

15. “…The transition from submissiveness to uttering a curse signals a major change in Job.” Wilson, Job, 42. ↩

16. Pohl, Ethical God-Talk in the Book of Job, 44. ↩

17. “The cycle begins with Job’s opening speech. While Job 3 does not address the friends, it is clear that the friends (particularly Eliphaz) respond to what he says in his opening statement. So while the dialogue proper may not begin until Job 4; Job 3 belongs in the first speech cycle.” Pohl, Ethical God-Talk in the Book of Job, 44. ↩

18. “Just as Job’s oath of clearance/innocence (31:35–37) will later require an answer. Job’s questionings and complaints do not simply arise in response to the barbed comments of his friends, for this curse and the following lament both precede and engender the response from the friends. Job complains even before he is lectured by his friends.” Wilson, Job, 43. ↩

19. A la (Charles Yu, “To Comfort Job: The Speeches in the Book of Job as Rhetorical Discourse” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2011)). ↩

20. Wilson, Job, 42. ↩

21. Sumpter, Job Through New Eyes, 79. ↩

22. For an exploration of this thesis, see Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry, 123–24. ↩

23. Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry, 124. ↩