William Blake engraved twenty-one plates for the Book of Job between 1823 and 1826. He was nearly seventy. He had been making prints of biblical subjects for fifty years, but the Job series was different — it was a single sustained reading of one book, and it would be the last major work he completed before his death in 1827. He worked on it for John Linnell, the young painter who supported him in his last decade. Blake was poor, partly blind, and possibly the only person in England who fully understood what he was doing.
The Last Work
Each of the twenty-one plates has a central image surrounded by margins of biblical text and small accompanying figures. The whole reads like a meditation on Job's transformation: from the prosperity of plate 1, through the destruction of plates 2 to 5, the long arguments with the friends in plates 6 to 13, the speeches of God from the whirlwind in plates 14 to 17, and the restoration in plates 18 to 21.
The Sentence That Begins It
Halfway through Blake's sequence, the famous sentence appears in the margin:
"Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."
The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Job has just heard, in four consecutive messengers, that all his oxen, sheep, camels, and children are dead. The verse is his response. It is one of the most famous sentences in the Bible because it is one of the hardest to read at face value. Blessed be the name of the Lord — said while still standing in the dust of catastrophe.
Blake does not endorse easy readings of this verse. The plates that follow show Job arguing with his friends, accusing God, demanding answers, falling silent under reproach, and finally being addressed by God out of a whirlwind. Job's first response is correct, but the book — and Blake — refuses to let it stand alone. The full meaning of blessed be the name of the Lord takes twenty more plates to arrive.
The Wife in Every Margin
In most artistic traditions, Job's wife is either left out or shown briefly cursing him. Blake keeps her in the picture. In plate after plate, she sits beside him on the dunghill, often in the same posture, often holding the same expression. She does not say much; the book of Job barely gives her a sentence. But Blake refuses to let her disappear. When Job is restored, she is restored beside him.
Blake's quiet argument: this is not a story of one man's solitary trial. It is a story of two people who lost everything and waited together. Most theologians have read past her. Blake never did.
The Forty Seconds
Write the verse out by hand — the whole of it: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. Forty seconds. In that time you feel what the plates know. That this sentence is not a destination. It is a starting point — the first honest words spoken by someone for whom the worst has happened. The rest of the book, and the rest of a life, is the slow work of meaning what was said too easily on the first day.
The wife is still beside him. The whirlwind has not yet spoken. The verse is a beginning, not an end.