Given Weil’s description of affliction, it is appropriate to return to the Book of Job, generally dated between 550-445 BCE. It is broadly understood to be a retelling of the story of the nation of Israel’s history before, during and after the Exile. It therefore possesses a psychological and sociological dimension, as well as the personal. At the core of the story, Job, our scriptural icon of the afflicted one, asks why? In the face of the loss of everything – children, wealth, honor and health (Job 1,2) – Job is initially resilient: “Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb and naked shall I go back again. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). As the suffering mounts and moves towards despair, Job’s wife counsels him, “Curse God and die” (2:9).  Job does not curse God; he curses himself. His previously stoic response collapses in the face of the depth of the experience. This is no mere suffering, this moves beyond that to what Weil calls affliction.

Weil would not be surprised at the suffering of Job. She would not find it surprising that the “innocent are killed, tortured, driven from their country, made destitute, or reduced to slavery, imprisoned in camps or cells, since there are criminals to perform such actions.” What surprises Weil is that God “should have given [humanity] the power to seize souls of the innocent and to take possession of them.”  I think because she detects in Job the true nature of affliction – the soul ceasing to love.

“After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed his day…. ‘Perish the day on which I was born and the night when they said, “The child is a boy.” May that day be darkness… may darkness of the day terrify it…let it not rejoice among the days of the year…let it hope for light, but have none … because it did not shut the doors of my mother’s womb and hide trouble from my eyes’” (Job 3:3-10).

In these lines Job tries to reverse the story of creation. He seeks to uncreate the day of his birth so his life and its misery will be unmade and cast into oblivion. The experience leads not to a cry for mercy, but for non-existence. The first victim of affliction can never be God; it is the individual.

Job’s complaint progresses from his own (3:1-16) to a recognition of the pain of others (3:19-23). The progression helps him see other suffering in the world, the suffering of prisoners, of the weary and all those who do not feel the light of God in their lives. He asks why he must suffer, in fact, why anyone must suffer. Job is describing affliction, a despair in which he can imagine no escape, no life, no future, only further pain. And what he faces is the silence of God. As Weil has noted, “Affliction makes God appear to be absent for a time”

Job holds nothing back in his complaint about God; he is unfailingly honest in expressing his pain and the feeling of betrayal that God has turned against him.  In expressing his grief, his outrage, and his despair, Job remains faithful both to God and to himself. His anger at God becomes an expression of his fidelity to God. He will not let go; he will not walk away, nor will he pretend he is something he is not. Job never turns away and in the end he meets God (Job 42:5) – realizing he is no longer abandoned and never was.