What Does Job 3:1 Mean?
After this, Job broke open his mouth and cursed his day.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “cursed” also carries the sense of making light, so Job’s grief treats the day of his birth as having no worth.
THE MEANING
When pain has outlasted silence, it can make even the day life began feel unbearable. Here grief speaks without being softened: the day itself becomes the object of the curse.
THE ROOT
וַיְקַלֵּל
vayqallel
GROWS FROM
ק־ל־ל
q-l-l
To be light or slight, to make light of something, and by extension to curse or hold in contempt.
“cursed his day” in this verse is vayqallel. The verb translated “cursed” carries a sense of making light as well as cursing. Job’s words treat the day of his birth as something stripped of worth; the Hebrew holds that contempt inside the curse.
ALSO GROWS
qal: Light, slight.
קַל
This branch reveals the root’s sense of lightness beneath the curse: the day is treated as having little or no worth.
qelalah: A curse, a spoken imprecation.
קְלָלָה
This noun names the curse as speech, matching the moment Job opens his mouth.
THE PATTERN
In anguish, speech can reach beyond present suffering and condemn the day life began.
Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night in which it was said, "A strong man has been conceived."Cursed be the day in which I was born; let not the day my mother bore me be blessed.The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that human by whom the Son of Man is handed over. It would have been good for that human if he had never been born.THE THREAD
And the LORD smelled the fragrance of rest, and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground for man's sake, for the shaping of man's heart is evil from his youth, and I will not again strike down every living thing, as I have done.Genesis 8:21 uses the same root, קָלַל (qalal, “curse” or “make light”), for the ground. Its reuse opens the scale of Job’s words: the curse reaches beyond a single misfortune to the day that marks the beginning of his life.
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