“Curse God and die”
Then Job's wife said to him, 'Do you still retain your integrity? Curse God and die!' (Job 2:9 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A straightforward, bitter demand to curse God.
The cultural key
In the Hebrew, Job's wife literally says 'Bless God and die.' Ancient scribes found it intolerable to set the words 'curse' and 'God' side by side, so throughout Job's opening they used the euphemism barak, 'bless,' as a stand-in for its exact opposite, a reverent substitution that runs through the book (1:5, 1:11, 2:5, and here). Translations rightly restore the real sense as 'curse,' but the pious cover-word is itself part of the text's texture: even the narrator will not spell out the blasphemy. Job's wife is telling him to abandon his loyalty, blaspheme, and be struck dead, and the very language used to say it flinches from the words.
Recovered meaning
'Curse God and die' translates a text that literally says 'Bless God', a deliberate scribal euphemism that refuses to place 'curse' next to 'God.' The substitution shows how unspeakable the blasphemy was felt to be.