Moses Striking the Rock in Horeb
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Exodus 17:6
The passage
Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.
Exodus 17:6
About this plate
The brightest plate in the Exodus sequence. A cliff rises at the upper left with Moses on it, arm still up from the blow, and water comes out of the rock and down into a pool. Below him the crowd is a mass of arms and cups and children. A woman kneels with a baby at the edge of the water, an old man is helped down, and sheep push in at the bottom right.
Dore gives the miracle almost no space and the thirst all of it. Moses is small and high up and half lost in light. What fills the block is people drinking, which is the part of the story that actually mattered to the people in it.
The light comes from behind the rock, so the water and the crowd nearest it are nearly white and everything at the edges falls away into grey. It is the same trick as the Creation of Light plate: the brightest area is the part of the block left uncut.
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