Job Picture 17

 First Posted July 2010

Illustrations of the Book of Job

Plate 17

 

Job's relation to God is healed; Job and his wife blessed; the friends turn their backs.

Note the difference here between the light side and the dark side.

What does it mean that the three "friends" are hiding their eyes. Recall that the three friends represent Job's shadow side; Blake referred to that variously as the Spectre, the covering cherub, Satan, etc. etc.

Blake inscribed oodles of Bible verses above and below the central image of this picture:

1 Samuel 2:6 "he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up."

Psalm 8:3-4 "When I behold [consider] thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained

4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?"

 

1 John 3:2 "...we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is."

 

John 10:30 "I and my Father are one."

 

John 14:9  "he that hath seen me hath seen the Father"

John 14:20 "At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you."

John 14:28 "If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father"

John 14:7  "If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him."

 

John 14:11 "Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me"

 

John 14:21 "he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him."

 

John 14:23 "and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him."

 

John 14:16-17 "he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;
17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive" 

John 14:17 "for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you."

 

Job 42:5 "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear but now mine eye seeth thee."

Blake lived into this picture and identified closely with it. The rhapsodic scripture he wrote below it was a tribute to the Bible, which he loved and a witness to his creative relationship with the O.T. God. He was thinking about that First Vision of Light where God called him "thou ramhorn'd with Gold":

"In his bosom sun bright I remaind.
Soft he smild And I heard his voice
Mild Saying This is My Fold O thou Ram hornd with gold
Who awakest from sleep"