These drawings were commissioned by Dalziel Brothers in 1863 for their 'Illustrated Bible' and seem to have been the only designs Burne-Jones made for the project in this medium.

They suggest the influence of William Blake, whose 'Life' by Alexander Gilchrist appeared in 1863 and was read by Burne-Jones that year. Burne-Jones had already treated this subject in designs for the rose window at the east end of Waltham Abbey, made in 1861, and he was to return to it again, in much more elaborate form, in a famous series of paintings exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877, now in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts.