Job's despair

Ex Libris: the printed image and the art of the book, 2010

The tale of Job is among the most moving stories depicted in the Bible; because of this, it has been of especial importance to many artists, none more so than to the British mystic, William Blake.

In the Biblical account, Satan taunts God with the suggestion that Job’s religious faith is dependent on his material wealth. Denying this, God allows Satan to test Job and a series of terrible torments ensue: his livestock are stolen, his children killed and Job himself is infected with deadly disease.

Plates eight and thirteen from Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job may be simpler, stylistically, than other illustrations from the series, but these plates portray the narrative’s most poignant moments. Job’s Despair renders the instant in which Job wishes to die and parts of his impassioned soliloquy, directed to God, appear at the edge of the engraving. Such terrible despair, however, disappears in The Lord Answering Job out of the Whirlwind. An image of intense beauty, God and Job come face to face within a whirlwind, delicately composed and ethereal in feeling. Job’s wonder is reinvigorated, his faith in God restored and thereafter, all his torments are reversed.

For Blake, the story of Job was not one in which God gambled with a man’s happiness. Rather, it was an allegory—entailing that one must place less significance on material possessions and more on spiritual experience—if in search of a genuine relationship with God.