Plate 99
Jehovah embraces Jerusalem

This is the penultimate plate of the whole Jerusalem series, and the man and woman embracing among dark flames is appropriately climactic. The picture illustrates the penultimate line of the whole poem: 'Awaking into his bosom in the Life of Immortality'.

Most commentators agree that the bearded old man is Jehovah, while the woman is Jerusalem. The image can be read as a message of universal reconciliation. The scholar Morton D. Paley (see bibliography) points out the resemblance between Blake's design and the Flemish artist Martin De Vos's engraving of the Prodigal Son. According to the artist Samuel Palmer (a friend of Blake) this was 'a story that Blake particularly loved and could not read without tears coming to his eyes'.