The Brazen Serpent
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Numbers 21:9
The passage
And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.
Numbers 21:9
About this plate
A mound of bodies fills the lower half of the plate — the bitten, dying and dead, piled and tangled, some reaching upward, some past reaching. Out of the top of the heap rises a pole with the brass serpent wound round it. To the right of centre Moses stands upright in a robe with his arm out, pointing at it, light breaking from his head.
Look at the pole. Doré has given it a crossbar. It is not a stake — it is a cross, and the serpent hangs on it. That is not decoration; it is an argument he expects the reader to catch, and John 3:14 is where he got it.
The verse is oddly mechanical for scripture. It does not say pray, or repent, or be sorry. It says when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. The cure is looking. Nothing else is required and nothing else is offered.
So Doré sorts the crowd by where their eyes are. The ones who have turned their heads up are drawn upright and lit. The ones who haven't are drawn as weight.
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