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The church of San Giorgio Maggiore was built on the San Giorgio Island between 1566 and 1600 using the design of Palladio. After 1590 the workshop of Tintoretto was commissioned to paint big canvases for decorating it. Due the large number of commissions, Tintoretto in his late years increasingly relied on his coworkers. However, three surviving paintings placed in a chapel consacrated in 1592 - The Jews in the Desert, The Last Supper and The Entombment - were certainly painted by Tintoretto himself.
The unusual iconography of this painting is still not entirely explained. There is much to suggest that Tintoretto was depicting the Israelites' scorning of the manna that led to the plague of fiery serpents and finally the setting up of the bronze serpent. Or the picture may combine different themes: the camp of the Israelites in the oasis of Elim, the washing of their clothes at the foot of Mount Sinai, the making of the copper basin for the sanctuary, the cooking of the manna, etc. The figure of Moses right foreground, shown in conversation with Aaron, is intentionally made to resemble Christ. Moses forms a typological link with the painting opposite, The Last Supper. As so often in Tintoretto, a certain scriptural meaning is concealed behind details that appear to be merely those of genre painting: the donkey driver top right could be Balaam who beat his animal because it was afraid of the angel of the Lord, whom Balaam himself did not see.
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