William Blake's Illustrations Of The Book Of Job

The act of commenting on written works is not limited to written commentary. In his engraving series Illustrations of the Book of Job, William Blake visually implements his varied interpretations of the Book of Job. He links the story to the greater Christian Biblical canon by adding verses from St. Paul’s Epistles to the Corinthians. In doing so, he condemns the Job’s comforters as blatantly evil rather than mislead. Additionally, he depicts Elihu as an ignored and inessential in order to advance the idea of his worthlessness as a character in the story of Job. At the top of the eleventh engraving, directly above the image, there is a line that reads: “Satan himself is transformed into an Angel of Light and his Ministers into Ministers of …show more content…
The connection is made explicit by the number of demons, equal to the number of comforters. There is also a visual link between the two groups: in the preceding engraving, the comforter’s arms are extended towards Job menacingly. The proximity of the comforter’s hands to Job’s body suggests that they are reaching for him. In the following engraving the three demons hands grip Job’s body, implying that the comforter’s hands have reached Job. This is corroborated by a visual connection between the comforters and the demons. On the arm of the middle demon, there is a ring of unknown material encircling its wrist. That same ring is mirrored in the preceding engraving on the arms of the comforters where their sleeves end. Moreover, in the same engraving, the wrinkles in the robes of the comforters mirror the effect of the scars on the arms of the …show more content…
In the sixteenth engraving, God banishes Satan and his followers from heaven. The sinful figures are depicted with their arms covering their eyes and their heads averted away from God. In the thirteenth engraving, God descends from heaven to bless Job. While Job and his wife are able to face God, the comforters turn away from god and cover their faces in the same manner as Satan and his followers. The comforter’s aversion to God is shown again in the seventeenth engraving, in which the three men physically turn away from Him. Besides physically mirroring Satan and his followers, this aversion to God also implies level of guilt, as if the comforters literally cannot face the consequences of the