Job (2)

Thank you very much to Howard Wallace for sharing his thoughts and insights about Job as depicted by William Blake. Howard writes: ‘Being a biblical scholar it prompted me to have another look at Blake’s prints to see how he has understood the biblical book of Job. Has he seen things there that ought to be noted? Has he missed some things that other scholars have highlighted? How does his interpretation stack up alongside that of others?’

‘One thing which Blake highlights in his print series is the role of Job’s wife. In the biblical story she is mentioned only once (Job 2:9-10). She is not referred to when Job’s ten children and other wealth is outlined at the beginning of the story, nor even at the end when Job fathers another ten children to replace the ones killed at the start. Moreover, Job’s new daughters receive accolades for their beauty at the end of the story while their mother (presumably the same wife as at the start) gets no mention’.

‘Job’s wife asks him a central question at the start: “Do you still persist in your integrity?” That is, why maintain your innocence. “Curse God and die.” She poses the central question of the book which addresses the (still) popular assumption that God blesses the innocent and punishes the guilty, especially when it relates to physical and material well-being. While such an assumption is at the heart of our sense of justice, it can so easily be perverted to read that if one is ‘blessed’ then one must be innocent and if one suffers, then the sufferer must have done something grievous. Job fights against such an assumption even as the book addresses the issue of the relation of suffering to innocence and guilt’.

‘Blake does not (as far as I have seen) have a print of Job’s wife confronting him. Compare the panel in this altarpiece by Dürer. But what Blake does is to include Job’s wife in every print in which Job appears, contra to the fact that she is not mentioned again in the book. Blake clearly understands the implications of Job’s wife’s question. Blake, like Job’s wife, grasps what is at stake. As Carol Newsom, a commentator on the biblical book says: “Job’s wife is the one who recognizes, long before Job himself does, what is at stake theologically in innocent suffering:  the conflict between innocence and integrity, on the one hand, and an affirmation of the goodness of God, on the other.” (The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations, Oxford, 2009, p. 132,). When Job’s so-called friends arrive on the scene, Job’s wife sits beside him’.

‘Each of the friends tries to convince Job that his suffering is just, i.e. he or another has done something to deserve the suffering. We hear a litany of well-worn arguments: Eliphaz: “Think now, who that was innocent ever perished?”; Bildad: “Does God pervert justice?  Likely your children sinned…”; and Zophar: “God is punishing you less than you deserve”’.

‘By keeping Job’s wife in the picture, Blake keeps before us the basic issue of the book: the conflict between integrity and the affirmations of faith. That is the internal struggle which Job faces. It is not just a matter of his rejection of the arguments of his ‘friends’, nor simply a matter of pigheadedness. Moreover, Blake is saying something to those who stand by those who suffer. Job’s wife may not understand in the story all that her husband faces (although in our context we may ponder her suffering too), but she never leaves him in Blake’s understanding. While such solidarity has its own conflicts, Blake speaks to all of us who, from time to time, are confronted by another’s suffering’.

‘A second point is to be noted. Blake’s series of prints takes in the whole scope of the biblical book as Michael’s posting (from July 9) shows. But in reality the book is far from a unity. It consists of three parts. The central section, from chapters 3-42:6 is a long narrative poem which outlines the main theological arguments regarding suffering. There are two chapters at the start which, in prose, set the scene describing Job’s wealth and with God and Satan wagering over Job’s faithfulness if such wealth were denied him’.

‘At the end of the book, another 11 prose verses are added telling how God restores Job’s wealth in family and property and supports Job’s integrity. The prose ending seems to affirm the very opposite of what the poetic section has been suggesting. In the prose Job does receive a blessing because of his faithfulness and refusal to curse God. But in the poetry job has been maintaining his innocence in the face of his suffering, which for his friends is clear evidence of the opposite’.

‘The poetry is also complex at its conclusion. In Job 42:6 one common translation of Job’s final statement is: ‘therefore, I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.’ But all scholars will acknowledge that the object of the verb ‘despise’ is absent in the Hebrew and the little Hebrew preposition translated ‘in’ could also be rendered ‘of’, ‘upon’, or even ‘in spite of’. In short, we have to supply a word for the thing Job repents, rejects, or recants. Is it his wealth, his words to God, his demand to see God, his proclaiming his integrity or…? Moreover, does he reject the symbol of humility represented by the dust and ashes or does he now take on that symbol fully as applicable to himself. If we take this complexity and uncertainty seriously then we realise that the poem, the older section of the Book of Job, leaves us without a clear answer to the question of why good or innocent people suffer. It leaves us to answer the question ourselves. Some later, unknown scribe, who apparently could not stand to be left with such uncertainty in one of their holy books, has added the prologue and epilogue to give the story both context and a ‘happy’ ending – although one may still wonder how the ending with a second lot of ten children could be entirely happy for Job or his wife, let alone their first lot of ten children’.

‘While Blake has raised some important issues about Job’s wife and the communal nature of suffering, he has not prompted our own response to Job’s situation, preferring to have us fall back into that familiar and too easy platitude that the good in life are blessed in life while the wicked will inevitably receive their just deserts’.

Thank you, Howard, for this illuminating scholarship.