Divinely Abused: A Philosophical Perspective on Job and His Kin

Divinely Abused engages with the logical features of the experience of divine abuse and the religious difficulties to which it gives rise. Taking Jobs trial as a test case, Verbin explores the relation between Jobs manner of understanding and responding to his misfortunes and the responses of others such as rabbi Aqiva, Kierkegaard and Simone Weil. She discusses the religious crisis to which the experience of divine abuse gives rise and the possibility of sustaining a minimal relationship with the God who is experienced as an abuser by means of forgiving God.

N. Verbin is an Assistant Professor at Tel Aviv University and a senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.