Abishai before David

This panel comes from the Mirror of Salvation altarpiece, which Witz painted around 1435 for the church of St. Leonhard in Basel. It illustrates a small, strange moment from the Book of Samuel. King David, camped in a war against the Philistines, said aloud that he longed for a drink from the well of Bethlehem, which lay behind enemy lines. Three of his warriors took the wish as an order, broke through, and carried the water back. Here one of them kneels and offers it to the king. What David did next is the point of the story. He refused to drink, and poured the water out on the ground, saying it was as precious as the blood of the men who had risked their lives for it. In the altarpiece this old scene was placed as a foreshadowing of the Gospel, one half of a pair the worshipper was meant to read together.