Divinely Abused is engaged with the logical features of the experience of divine abuse and the religious difficulties to which it gives rise. Taking Job's trial as a test case, Verbin explores the relation between Job's manner of understanding and responding to his misfortunes and other manners of responding to misfortunes, e.g., rabbi Aqiva's, Kierkegaard's and Simone Weil's manners of responding to misfortunes. 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.

Author Biography

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