| 14. Linguistic Exegesis The verse opens with the emphatic malediction arur {אָרוּר | ʾārūr} ‘cursed’, followed by the definite hayyom {הַיּוֹם | ha-y-yōm} ‘the day’ as subject. The relative clause asher yulladti bo {אֲשֶׁר יֻלַּדְתִּי בּוֹ | ʾă-šer yu-llad-tī bō} ‘which I was born in it’ employs the Pual stem to express passive causation. A parallel clause yom asher-yeladatni immi {יוֹם אֲשֶׁר־יְלָדַתְנִי אִמִּי | yōm ʾă-šer-yə-la-daṯ-nî ʾim-mî} ‘the day that my mother bore me’ uses the Qal perfect for active voice. The negative jussive al-yehi barukh {אַל־יְהִי בָּרוּךְ | ʾal-yə-hî bā-rūḵ} constitutes a strong plea, ‘let it not be blessed’. The chiastic structure juxtaposes ‘cursed’ and ‘blessed’ around the shared referent ‘day’, and the English version preserves this parallelism and emphatic word order. |