“Several scholars
argue that the writer of Job really did mean “bless” and that
Job’s wife was
forcing him to confront the possibility of death and encouraging him to “bless
God” before he dies. Because he was at death’s door she was urging him
to say a final
blessing, in much the same way that religious people often like their final
words to be a prayer or some words from a sacred text …”.
Stephen D. Cook
Stephen D. Cook makes a lot of sense here:
“Curse God and die!” Did Job’s wife really say that? – מִקְרָא Mikra: Biblical studies
Heroes and Villains, Job, Book of
“Curse God and die!” Did Job’s wife really say that?
Date: August 30, 2022
The easy answer to the
question would be “It’s in the Bible (Job 2:10), so of course she said it!” The
not-so-easy answer is that the Hebrew from which our English Bibles are
translated literally says “Bless God and die!” So why did the
translators reverse the meaning of the Hebrew word ברך bless and turn Job’s wife into a villain in the
process?
The oldest translation of the
Hebrew Bible into another language is the ancient Greek translation known as
the Septuagint. Interestingly, in the Septuagint Job’s wife says much more than
she does in the Hebrew. She reminds Job that she too has lost everything, and
she too is grieving over the deaths of their children, and in fact she is the
one that now has to carry on to provide for them both. The Septuagint then has
something similar to her words in the Hebrew, but with an important difference:
“Now say some word to the Lord and die!” (ἀλλὰ εἰπόν
τι
ῥῆμα εἰς
κύριον καὶ τελεύτα). There is no suggestion here that he should curse
God. It sounds more like she was suggesting he should prepare for death with a
final prayer. [1]
It is also puzzling that twice
elsewhere in the narrative the translators have changed “bless” to “curse.”
During Satan’s two encounters with God he said “But stretch out your hand now,
and touch all that he [Job] has, and he will curse you to your
face” (1:11; 2:5). The word translated “curse” here is the same Hebrew word ברך used by Job’s
wife and means “bless.”
In fact, it is precisely the same word that occurs in the previous verse (1:10)
when Satan said “You have blessed the work of his hands.” Interestingly, if we
translate this in the most natural way – he will bless you – then Satan was
actually proven right! Job did hold on to his faith and
piety, despite losing everything. [2]
After receiving news that all
his children had been killed Job said “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and
naked shall I return there; the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed [same
word] be the name of the LORD” (1:21). Perhaps the translators didn’t like
Satan being right, and maybe they also thought it made more sense for Job’s
wife to mock him rather than encouraging him to maintain his faith in God.
Also, in Job 1:5, we read that Job feared that his children may have sinned:
“It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God
in their hearts.” Again, this is our Hebrew word which really means “blessed”
God. “Cursed God in their hearts” might make more sense to modern readers, but
it’s not what the text says! It actually happens more often than most people
would realise that translators go with what seems to them to make the most
sense, rather than what the text actually says.
The Hebrew word ברך, to bless, is a common word in the Bible, occurring nearly 500
times. Outside of Job one would be hard pressed to find a case where the word
unambiguously means “curse” rather than “bless.” However, some scholars argue
that there are three other cases where this happens. In language similar to
Job, 1 Kings 21:10 has “You have cursed God and the king” and
here the word translated “cursed” is again ברך (see also v. 13). Like Job,
the translators have figured that “you have blessed
God”
wouldn’t make any sense as the
culprit was then taken out and executed. Similarly, Psalm 10:3 has “those
greedy for gain curse (ברך) and renounce the LORD”.
Again, “bless”
wouldn’t seem to make much sense
here, so the translators have gone for the obverse “curse.”
One possible explanation is that in this handful of cases ancient scribes had a
problem with putting the words “curse”
and “God”
side-by-side in a manuscript, so they substituted the Hebrew word for “curse”
with ברך,
bless. This is an interesting theory, but there is no evidence that this is
what actually happened. Oddly, however, if this was the case in Psalm 10:3 then
these scribes didn’t have a problem with leaving the word “renounce” beside the
name of God: בֵּרֵךְ נִאֵץ ׀ יְהוָֽה. You might notice a little
vertical line ׀
between נִאֵץ (renounce) and the name of God (יְהוָֽה). The technical name for this
is paseq which simply means “separator” and there are
more than 500 of these in the Hebrew Bible. This is a device which was used by
the medieval scribes (the Masoretes) who wanted to separate certain words, such
as words beginning and ending with the same letter to avoid confusion, or words
which are to a high degree contradictory, such as “God” and “evil”. Out of
reverence for the divine name they also did this whenever the name was preceded
by a word which they felt was too negative or somehow inappropriate to be
placed immediately next to it. However, they couldn’t use this device in the
verses in 1 Kings and Job, either because the change from “curse” to “bless”
had been made by a much earlier generation of scribes as another way of
resolving the problem, or because the text really did mean “bless” and always
did.
Several scholars argue that
the writer of Job really did mean “bless” and that Job’s wife was forcing him
to confront the possibility of death and encouraging him to “bless God” before
he dies. Because he was at death’s door she was urging him to say a final
blessing, in much the same way that religious people often like their final
words to be a prayer or some words from a sacred text (such as the Jewish
tradition of reciting the shema, the words of Deuteronomy 6:4,
as one’s final words: “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One”).
This argument is supported by the biblical cultural context of blessing God
when dying, and the fact that grammatically the Hebrew word is in the piel or
intensive form which could suggest a sense of urgency. Job, however, was not
convinced he was dying and so rebuked her by saying she should not speak so
foolishly (v.10). [3]
Perhaps there is a clue at the
end of Job: “The LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than
his beginning” (42:12). The book of Job begins and ends on the subject of
blessing: first there was the discussion between God and Satan about whether or
not Job would continue to bless God if he lost everything with which God had
blessed him … it moves on to Job’s wife encouraging Job to bless God before he
dies; there is then a long debate about whether Job is in fact blessed or
cursed; and the story ends with God blessing Job again. There is an interplay
between God blessing Job, and Job blessing God, and between Job being blessed
or cursed. However, we miss this if we change “bless” to “curse” in a handful
of places.
I understand the difficulties
which translators face in endeavouring to translate what the text actually
says, while trying to make sure it makes sense to the reader. This requires
them to interpret as well as to translate and
it often can’t be easy to strike the right balance. But here, in my view, it
would have been better to have translated the text precisely the way it said
it, and leave the reader to make sense of it. It turns out that Job’s wife may
not have been a negative, sarcastic, mocking villain after all. Rather, she was
more likely a devout woman, a grieving mother, and a supportive wife who
encouraged her husband to maintain his faith to the end and to bless God in his
final words.
[1] Some other ancient
versions have “bless God” here, including the Latin Vulgate (“benedic Deo
et morere”), and the Aramaic Targum Job (which uses בריך, the Aramaic equivalent of
the Hebrew ברך,
i.e. bless God). The Syriac Peshitta,
however, seems to be the odd one out among the ancient versions with ܨ݁ܚܐ, revile or curse God.
[2] Some scholars argue that
the Hebrew can be translated “Surely, he will not bless you
to your face.” The technical argument is that the particle אם־לא can be translated as a particle of asseveration,
and the Hebrew text אם לא על פניך יברכך can therefore be rendered in the sense of an
emphatic challenge, “He will certainly not bless
you to your face” (see BalentIne, Samuel. Job. Smyth & Helwys
Bible Commentary. Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2006, 54).
[3] For further discussion
about this see Lier, G. E. “Translating ברך in Job 2:9 –
a functionalist approach.” Acta Theologica 38, no. 2 (2018):
105-122. See also Rafferty, Timothy C. “What is humanity? Who is God? The
blessing, praise, and failures of human dominion over nature in the Hebrew
Bible.” PhD Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2022, 128-158.
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