Moses Drawing Water from the Rock (detail)
by TINTORETTO, Oil on canvas
As soon as the Israelites had been saved from dying of thirst by the miracle of Moses smiting the rock, the next danger threatened: the Amalekites, a nomadic tribe of the northern Sinai peninsula and hostile to the children of Israel, marched on their camp in Rephidim. In setting the battle with the Amalekites apart from the darker foreground by its pale pastel colours, Tintoretto puts spatial and temporal distance between the battle and the miracle of the water.