Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Exodus 7:10
The passage
And Moses and Aaron went in unto Pharaoh, and they did so as the LORD had commanded: and Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh, and before his servants, and it became a serpent.
Exodus 7:10
About this plate
An enormous hall. Columns carved with faces on all four sides of the capital run back into the dark. A low screen wall crosses the middle of the picture, covered in reliefs, and the court is leaning over the top of it looking down. Pharaoh sits well back and small among them. Two men in dark robes stand together on the right of the open floor. On the pavement between them and the throne, tiny, there is a snake.
The floor is the subject here. Dore gives nearly half the plate to bare stone, so that the two visitors are a long way from the throne and the thing they have done is smaller than either. Everyone is looking down at it, and it barely registers.
The verse is deliberately flat about it. Moses and Aaron went in unto Pharaoh, and they did so as the LORD had commanded, and Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh, and it became a serpent. No crowd reaction, no speech. Just the instruction and the obedience.
The serpent is the smallest mark in a very large room.
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