Elijah and the Angel

Also illuminating is this depiction of the rescue of the prophet Elijah by an angel, in which the angel’s legs are combined into a single, tube-like extremity. Here Meidner refers to a characteristic of angels derived from a Bible verse in the Shulchan Aruch. Here, in the instructions for the morning prayer, it says: “One places the feet together as if they were but one foot in order to be more like the angels, of whom it is said (Ezek 1:7), their feet a straight foot, meaning their feet appear as one foot.” There are no precursors in art for this depiction of the angel with one foot, which means that Meidner adopted the motif directly from post-biblical rabbinical writings.