Job 3:6-8 and cursing the night

It dawned on me how much my 1971 world had shattered when I read Job 3:8 in the Hebrew this morning. Oh, it was nothing in the text itself that shattered that world, as if cursing the day (or the Sea) and being skilled to wake up Leviathan were earth-shattering events for me. It was the simple realization that one of the three Hebrew words for "curse" used in this chapter, qabab, only appeared in Job, Proverbs (2X) and the Balaam narrative of the Book of Numbers (Num. 22-24; 8X).

When I saw the distribution of qabab, I immediately thought, in good Germanic fashion, 'my goodness, I wonder if the author of Job and the shaper of the Balaam narrative worked in the same exilic "circle?"' Then I said to myself, 'Since there are also two appearances of this verb in the Book of Proverbs, perhaps this Job/Balaam-writer's "circle" was a "wisdom-oriented" circle among the exiles, formed possibly to try to establish some stability in the chaos of exile, but using vocabulary of cursing as a way of expressing emotion even as they tried to control the world.'

I engaged in this mental exercise even before I consciously thought I was engaging in this exercise. And then it dawned on me, and I laughed out loud. 'Of course, it is all a game. Biblical studies is nothing more than a game where people make up people and make up situations and make up communities and make up events in the community and then say, "Yes, the text I am studying fits perfectly into this community."' Of course it does! You just made up the community which would be the natural "home" for the text, so why not find the text "at home" there?

Leaving "Professional" Biblical Studies

That experience, in essence, is why I left the field of biblical studies. I saw that it was nothing more than an imaginative exercise. For, in fact, no one really knows the "shape" of Israelite exilic life. No one knows how many Israelites were exiled, which years they spent at which locations, how their communities were organized in exile, who was in charge, how they were precisely treated by the people in power, what lessons they taught their children, etc. Every question that is an important question for me has no answer to it because of the paucity of documentation. Oh, of course, we have some great literary work from that period, including the soaring words of Is. 40-55, for example. But we don't know the "life" of the people.

Because I was too committed to history, because I was committed to drawing meaning out in every day and every place, I had to give up professional biblical studies or feel like a complete fraud. When all is said and done, you have little more than the text. Well, that is a lot, from some measures, but you really cannot reconstruct a history, at least the kind of history that interests me, from that material.

What's Left?

Then, when a series of personal reversals came to me beginning in 1986, I felt that the God of the Bible was less real than was represented in the text. That is, the God of the Bible is really a very present deity, one who communicates and guides, one who comforts and inspires. Several texts speak of a kind of genuine intimacy that can exist between a person who commits him/herself to this God and God.

But that didn't work for me after about 1990, even though this isnt' the right place to go into those reasons. That left the psychological dimension of the Scriptures, which have continued to grow for me in the intervening years. That is why the Book of Job is my constant companion and lure. I think it is the only biblical book I have thus far discovered which allows and even encourages me to connect literary expression, emotional life and psychological depth. And it does so through the concept of loss and the grief attendant upon loss. So, as I read through the Book of Job I want to pause on nearly every Hebrew phrase, study the vocabulary, see how these words are also used in other sections of the Hebrew Bible, and uncover how the words are "freighted" with meaning.

I used to think that the basic unit of the Book of Job was the verse. Now I know better. Often a verse is divided into three or four phrases of four, three or even two words. I am now exploring those atomic morsels of meaning, seeing if and how they explode upon touching, how they give a different or arresting way of construing life.

Anything at all on 3:6-8?

Thus, I get to the end of my two essays on 3:6-8 without having said a word about the text (ah, I said a lot about "cursing," however). I indicated in a previous essay that 3:3-8 is divided as follows: v.3 a sort of "headline verse," mentioning both day and night; vv.4-5, concerning the day; vv.6-8, concerning the night. The description of the night is not as arresting for me as that of the day. However, the use of a third term for darkness (ophel) which also appears in 10:21-22, deserves mention (v.7). Job wants the night to become "deep gloom." When that word is used in 10:22 it is associated with a realm--the land of ophel. Maybe it is a Sheol-like place where the darkness of night is transmuted into an inkly blackness that is more impenetrable. So, Job is asking not simply for darkness and the shadow of death to return; he is asking that the evening (laylah) be transformed into ophel. Job seeks a reversal of life to be sure. But he wants life to become even darker than the evening, even as impenetrable as Sheol.

Conclusion

As I mentioned in the previous essay, Job wants a place where there is no joy, rennanah. Let the cloud, annanah, settle in, shakan, over the world now, for Job is getting ready now not just for a dark night of the soul, or a long day's journey into night, but for the extinguishment of all meaning. Interested in joining him on the journey?