Evil Irony

However, reach out with Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh; he will curse You to Your face!”   Job 2:5  NASB

Curse – The translation correctly provides a contextual meaning, but what you can’t see in the translation is the irony of haśśāṭān’s remark.  In Hebrew, the text reads:

אִם־לֹ֥א אֶל־פָּנֶ֖יךָ יְבָֽרְכֶֽךָּ

Literally, “he not to face of you bless you.”  In other words, as Chabad translates, “. . . will he not blaspheme You to Your face?” turning the phrase into a rhetorical question.  Now we realize that the word is not “curse,” but rather “bless,” coupled with the negative, that is, “not bless.”  The irony is the twisting of the real meaning of bārak.  “This root and its derivatives occur 415 times. The majority are in the Piel stem (214) which is translated ‘to bless.’”^[1]

Whatever may have been the ancient near eastern conception of the source of blessing, the ot sees God as the only source. As such he controls blessing and cursing (Num 22f.). His presence confers blessing (II Sam 6:11–20), and it is only in his name that others can confer blessing (Deut 10:8, etc.). Indeed, God’s name, the manifestation of his personal, redemptive, covenant-keeping nature, is at the heart of all blessing.

As a result, those who are wrongly related to God can neither bless (Mal 2:2) nor be blessed (Deut 28) and no efficacious word can alter this. Those who are blessed manifest God’s ḥesed and ʾĕmet (Deut 15:14; I Sam 23:21; I Kgs 10:9; etc.). To rely upon the existence of the covenant between oneself and God without manifesting his nature is to bless oneself and to court disaster (Deut 29:18f.).

The transposition of blessing and cursing with life and death in Deut 30:19 and elsewhere reaches the heart of the ot concept of blessing^[2]

It is even more ironic that haśśāṭān attempts to employ a term which can only be derived from God’s covenant relationship with His creation.   The accuser suggests that bārak may be used to blaspheme its source.  We will see the same ironic transposition in the mouth of Job’s wife, although in this case reversed, when she sarcastically tells Job to “bless” God, meaning rather to curse Him.

Job understands the linguistic umbrella of bārak.  It is not sût.  There can be no instance where bārak may occur without honoring God’s righteousness and sovereignty.  To even imagine that such a thing could occur is blasphemy.  Job knows this. Job accepts God’s hand without questioning God’s honor.  He treats whatever happens to him with a heart willing to submit to God’s authority.  I wonder if we do.

Topical Index: bārak, bless, curse, blasphemy, Job 2:5

^[1] Oswalt, J. N. (1999). 285 בָּרַך. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 132). Moody Press.

^[2] Ibid.