High amid the smoke and thunderings on Mount Sinai, for 40 days did Moses neither eat nor drink. Then on that fiery summit there came forth two tables of the Law, two tables of stone, written with the finger of God.
Humble and awestruck, Moses hears the awesome words of God from "the bush that burns but is not consumed". He is charged to return to Egypt, there to demand of Pharaoh that he "let my people go".
And Moses stretched forth his staff over the sea. And the waters were parted to open a highway for the escape of Israel. And the waters stood upright as an heap, as a wall on their left and on their right. This massive scene could never have been photographed in one view. In the motion picture this sequence is seen in many individual shots over several minutes' time. It required the artist to condense the whole sequence into one single picture.
After 40 years wandering in the wilderness, it is time for Israel to enter their promised land. For his disobedience Moses is forbidden to enter. At last high on Mount Nebo, Moses consecrates Joshua to lead the people over Jordan.
Here Friberg's painting presents a new, lovely, and entirely fresh concept of this Biblical scene. The phrase "Moses in the bulrushes" is wrong. It was the ark (basket) that was made of rushes and was found "in the flags (lilies) by the water's edge."
Here Friberg has captured the deep solemnity of this sacred scene. During the long night of terror, Moses charges the boy to remember this night when angel of death passed over the homes of the faithful of Israel.
"For had ye believed Moses ye would have believed Me" The above quotation was DeMille's favorite Bible passage, for it ties together the Old and the New Testaments. Mr. DeMille held in his heart a deep conviction of the relationship between Moses and Christ, between the light and the law, a relationship so well expressed in the Friberg painting. Here Moses is in no way the equal of the Lord. Yet, bathed in the divine light of Christ, he grows and emerges into a great prophet.
