Pain in the Hebrew Bible

Pain runs as a vivid thread through the fabric of the Hebrew Bible, a marker of human vulnerability that resists fixed categories. It moves between the physical and the emotional, the individual and the collective, the immediate and the remembered. Its expression is shaped by language, filtered through culture, and constrained by social convention. While earlier thinkers often viewed pain as incommunicable, many now argue that it can be meaningfully expressed. Biblical texts, in this light, articulate pain through a range of narrative, poetic, and rhetorical strategies—offering not a unified theory, but a rich and varied repertoire for making suffering intelligible. This special issue shows how multiperspective approaches to pain can enhance our understanding of biblical literature and contribute to broader reflections on human suffering.