Curse Text

Unknown

12th Century

About This Entry

This document provides a somewhat atypical curse text, as it does not adopt the usual formulas of magical texts, such as the invocation of angels or mysterious names for God. The text provides a curse against an unnamed individual; this section may derive from a preexisting magical formula. It also includes an alphabetic acrostic, a common feature of medieval Hebrew liturgical poetry. In addition, it draws on Deuteronomy 28, a passage that includes some of the harshest curses in the Hebrew Bible.

May curse and damage amputate their thighs. Amen.

May murder and butchery slice up their bowels. Amen.

May slashing and swelling blow up their legs. Amen.

May weariness and cursing cut their feet. Amen.

Let these curses come to all their limbs

and all their sides, to perpetuate their illness

and to make their flesh rot, until their name is obliterated,

as is written in the Torah of Moses about them and those like them:

Let the Lord never forgive them, as it is said:

The Lord will never forgive him (Deuteronomy 29:19) etc., one and all,

and may each and every one of them

be destroyed, swallowed up, mutilated, stabbed, thrown down,

damaged, torn, impaled, chained,

torched, left to die, injured, burned, uprooted,

split, diminished, ruined, ignited, annihilated,

hung, struck by all kinds of boils and pestilence.

And may all plagues affect him.¹ In the evil hours

when the stern decrees go out,

that come newly to him, as it is said:

The Lord strike you with consumption; etc. (Deuteronomy 28:22); The Lord will strike you with Egyptian inflammation etc. (Deuteronomy 28:27); evil;

The Lord will strike you with madness and blindness etc. (Deuteronomy 28:28); and you shall become [a horror to the peoples of the earth] (Deuteronomy 28:25);

Cursed shall you be in the city, etc. (Deuteronomy 28:16) and all the rest of the curses

written in this book of the Torah, to eradicate

their name and memory and to eliminate them from the world.

Amen Amen Selah.

Cursed be they by the awesome, magnificent and fearsome one,

twelve hours a day. Amen.

Cursed be they by God, who dwells in the high heavens,

twelve hours each and every night. Amen.

Cursed be they by God, who authorizes every plague—

Eighty-eight thousand

eight hundred eighty-eight every moment.

Cursed be they by God, who is glorious in holiness,

thirty days of every month.

Cursed be they by God who is before him,

twelve months of every year.

Cursed be they by the one who established [that which is] above and below,

seven years of every sabbatical cycle.

Source: CUL T-S K1.90.

Translated by Michael D. Swartz.

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Notes

Words in brackets appear in the original translation.

The text seems to be switching temporarily to the singular, perhaps because the scribe is copying a formula text cast originally in the singular.

Credits

Unknown, Curse Text, trans. Michael D. Swartz, from Michael D. Swartz, The Mechanics of Providence: The Workings of Ancient Jewish Magic and Mysticism (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 137–38. © 2018 Mohr Siebeck Tübingen. www.mohrsiebeck.com. Used with permission of the publisher.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 3: Encountering Christianity and Islam.