When Job's afflictions fall upon him he curses his day--the day, as commonly understood, wherein he was born. But how can one curse a past period of time and ask the darkness to cover it?
{p. 282}
The original text is probably a reference to the events that were then transpiring:
"Let that day be turned into darkness; let not God regard it from above; and let not the light shine upon it. Let darkness and the shadow of death cover it; let a mist overspread it, and let it be wrapped up in bitterness. Let a darksome whirlwind seize upon that night. . . . Let them curse it who curse the clay, who are ready to raise up a leviathan."[1]
De Dieu says it should read, "And thou, leviathan, rouse up." "Let a mist overspread it"; literally, "let a gathered mass of dark clouds cover it."
"The Fathers generally understand the devil to be meant by the leviathan."
We shall see that it means the fiery dragon, the comet:
"Let the stars be darkened with the mist thereof; let it expect light and not see it, nor the rising of the dawning of the day."[2]
In other words, Job is not imprecating future evils on a past time--an impossibility, an absurdity: he is describing the events then transpiring--the whirlwind, the darkness, the mist, the day that does not come, and the leviathan, the demon, the comet.
Job seems to regret that he has escaped with his life: