A Journey through Covid with William Blake and Job

A Journey through Covid with William Blake and Job

Plate 13: Then the Lord answered Job out of the Whirlwind

 

 

 

Welcome back to the next instalment of our journey through the Book of Job with William Blake, genius illustrator, as our guide. We are now more than half-way through the plates when God finally makes an appearance. God had been in the earliest plates in the court of heaven but as yet has not manifested to Job himself – although as we saw earlier Lucifer certainly has by means of plague, pestilence etc.

It is worth spending some time pondering this first appearance which is why I include the close up of the central plate as well as the whole surrounding image. The relevant passage in the Book of Job (Chapter 38) is as follows:

 

          Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:

          ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?...

          Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

          Tell me, if you have understanding.

 

Who has not felt a whirlwind of emotions these past few weeks? Have we not gone from denial to anger to frustration to loneliness to helplessness to depression? Yet out of this whirlwind something new, and yet very old, emerges. It is the ground-beat of creation. Throughout our cities, towns and villages nature has reasserted itself. Here in the Northern Latitudes the inevitable return of spring has brightened our dark covid days and each evening, over London anyway, Venus and the great spring stars of Regulus and Spica have shone through unusually clear skies. Nature has returned, and with it the renewing force of creation.

Blake depicts the Creator with a compassionate gaze as he blesses Job and his wife. Using medieval iconography which he was very aware of, Job and his wife are put on God’s right hand, the traditional side of the blessed – Those ‘accusers’ who used all sorts of sophistry to bend the truth go on the left-hand side with the unrighteous. They are even closer to blindness and not seeing – let’s hope they too will eventually see something of God’s wisdom and compassion. Job’s rough woollen ‘comfort blanket’ slips away to reveal his nakedness beneath – ‘naked I came from my mother’s womb, naked I return, Blessed be the name of the Lord’. The Lord’s whirlwind has a placental shape and he points away to the distance. This is the moment of renewal and new directions – Job is being prepared for the next phase of his life. All masks have fallen now, we are faced with the truth – Satya in Sanskrit – a word that combines the notions of ‘truth’ and ‘being’.

          If nothing else the covid crisis has returned us to the fundamentals of life – what and who really matters. As much as Job we have had an encounter with the foundations of being, nature and creation. It is up to us now to grow wise from this encounter so that from now on we cease uttering ‘words without knowledge’.

 

Love

Peter