He sits with both arms raised high, his body dotted with sores.
Bible in art · Job
The Book of Job, plate 8: Let the Day perish wherein I was Born
William Blake · 1825
The Cleveland Museum of Art
Plate 8 of William Blake’s Job engravings (1825). After seven days of silence Job speaks and curses the day he was born.
Job sits upright with both arms thrown up, the only figure facing us; his wife and friends bow to the ground beside him. Huge stone blocks stand behind him. The plate is engraved in close lines that make the sky and hills dark.
From the text
- Seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word (Job 2:13)
- “May the day of my birth perish” (Job 3:3)
- “may no joyful voice come into it” (Job 3:7)
The artist’s own
- Massive stone blocks like a ruined doorway
- Toadstools and thorns in the border
Details
Job
Bowed to the ground
His wife bends down with her face to the earth.
The friends
Two figures bow, hiding their faces.
The stones
Huge stone blocks stand behind like a ruined doorway.
William Blake, British, 1757–1827. The Cleveland Museum of Art (Mr. and Mrs. Charles G. Prasse Collection, 1963.303.9) · Engraving (proof impression) · Cleveland Museum of Art Open Access: Collection API record "share_license_status": "CC0" (Creative Commons Zero, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).