The Work
Doré's Jacob Blesses His Sons (from La Sainte Bible, 1866) depicts the aged patriarch on his deathbed surrounded by his twelve sons, his prophetic blessings distributing each son's destiny as the founding act of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
Biblical Source
Genesis 49:1-28 - "Then Jacob called for his sons and said: 'Gather around so I can tell you what will happen to you in days to come'" - narrates the deathbed blessings, one of the most complete prophetic poems in the Pentateuch. Each son receives a characterization and a destiny: Judah gets the scepter ("The scepter will not depart from Judah," 49:10, applied in Christian typology to Christ); Joseph receives the most extended blessing; Reuben is rebuked for his incest.
Artist and Iconography
Doré's composition arranges the twelve sons in a semicircle around the dying patriarch, their twelve faces suggesting the diverse futures their father's words are assigning. The plate was used as an introduction to Twelve Tribes traditions in Victorian Bible education and as an illustration of the concept of prophetic blessing - the patriarch's words as constitutive of the reality they describe.