Jacob and the Peeled Rods
Virgil Solis, 1565 · Genesis 30:37
The passage
And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chestnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods.
Genesis 30:37
About this woodcut
A shepherd stands at a long watering trough with peeled rods laid along it, and the flock comes down to drink. Sheep and goats crowd the foreground. Figures stand talking in the middle distance and a village sits on the hill.
It is one of the strangest passages in Genesis and one of the least illustrated. Jacob is running a breeding scheme with sticks. Solis draws it as an ordinary day of farm work, which is exactly the register the text is in.
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