Job Picture 5

 

Above the picture we read:
"Did I not weep for him who was in trouble"
"Was not my God afflicted for the poor"
"Behold he is in thy hands but save his life"

His faith threatened by what the messenger had told him, Job attempts to demonstrate what a good Jew he is , pouring money into the hands of a less wealthy brother.

Meanwhile the middle layer of the picture shows Satan about to pour fire upon Job and 'get serious'-- the misfortunes to his children was one thing, bodily harm to himself is something else again.

In this picture Job (at the bottom) and God (at the top) bear a close resemblance. (Blake said something here of real significance: our image of God may be closer to our self image than to any objective idea of God ["Mental Things are alone Real; what is Calld Corporeal Nobody Knows of its dwelling Place; it is in Fallacy & its Existence an Imposture. Where is the Existence Out of Mind or Thought? Where is it but in the Mind of a Fool?" From Vision of Last Judgment (Erdman 565)] 

(You might remember the same tired looking old man in the sky in Blake's masterwork called the Sea of Time and Space.)

The middle section of the picture shows a fiery Satan headed downward, about to rain fire upon the Earth. Edinger (p.27) points out that the two old men "have fallen into a neurasthenic state while Satan is in command of intense energies" (can you recall a moment when you might have been in a similar situation?). This indicates the fluctuating balance between psychic energy in the conscious and unconscious states-- like a pendulum swinging back and forth.

 

Under the influence of an explosion of the Unconscious we, like Blake's Job, may resort to illusory conventional activities. In just that manner we may ward off the Creative impulses coming to us from God, often thought to be from Old Harry, and we rest in the manacles of conventional mediocrity.
 

The captions under the picture read: 

"Then went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord." (Job 2:7)

"And it grieved him at his heart" (Psalm 78:40?)
"Who maketh his Angels Spirits and his Mininsters a flaming fire" (Lamentations 2:3)
 

And below everything else can be seen a monstrous and evil-looking snake.