And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. (Zecharian 12:10, KJV)
Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen. (Revelation 1:7, KJV)
The second text from the opening chapter of the Book of Revelation identifies the one "they have pierced" in the prophetic passage from the Hebrew Scriptures as Jesus the Messiah. In his depiction of the Second Coming of Christ, the visionary writer of the final book of the Bible sees the peoples of the world recognizing and bemoaning their role in piercing Christ's hands with nails and thrusting a spear in his side at the Crucifixion as they seek to make peace with God. Russian Printmaker Evgeny Blumkin offers us a surrealistic glimpse of cosmic redemption in this etching, where a gallery of humans in all their diversity go eyeball to eyeball with their Crucified Savior. He meets thair gaze with a loving tear, as the light of salvation beams through the open doors of a prison. This new book plate, created for the exhibition, Jubilee 2000: The Sacred Ex Libris of the 20th Century, in Pescara, Italy, can now be viewed on the East European Ex-Libris page in the Schools of Sacred Art section. (John Kohan)