"Blot out that day when I was born
             and the night that said 'a male has been conceived!" (3:1, p.57)
             The conventional, moralistic reading of the skeletal story of Job tends to take into consideration only the frame narrative of the tale. The framing Job prose fragment suggests a rather straightforward narrative of virtue rewarded, much like an Aesop's fable with a happy ending. The framing prose narrative tells the tale of a man named Job, a good and prosperous man who loves God. Over the course of the narrative, Job is tested by the loss of everything that is dear to him. Then, Job is eventually rewarded for his resistance to the temptation to curse God and to give up. However, a considerably more complex figure of Job emerges in a close analysis of the debate between Job and his friends in the poetic part of the tale. This poetry takes the form of philosophical musing, and is written in a considerably different style than the framing prose. The poetry makes up the bulk of the Biblical text, and, as seen in the above excerpt, provides no easy answers about the nature of God's justice, and retributive justice in general.
             True, Job does not explicitly curse God during the more ambiguously worded poetic segments of his tale. But he does curse the day he was born. Job asks the day he came into the world to be blotted out, essentially bemoaning his own existence, and also, by extension the God-given pleasures he enjoyed before they were taken away from him by the same being that gave them to him. How, one might ask, can Job's wish not to exist not be a kind of curse upon the divine creator? This outburst eventually provokes the rebuke from the heavens, reminding Job of his powerlessness, and the ability of the heavens to control the elements and the natural forces of the world, like storms and the sea, as well as bring humanity into existence.
             Job does not curse God, but he does curse himself, ...