Scripture · Psalm 131:1-3
Psalm 124:7
The Escape of a Heretic, 1559
We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowler; the net is torn, and we have slipped away.
A young woman in a yellow penitential garment stands beside a man in a monk’s habit, while a bound monk remains at the left.
About the artwork
The close grouping makes disguise and captivity the scene’s central facts. The yellow garment bears images of punishment; the monk at the left is restrained, with a rosary drawn across the cloth at his mouth. The figure in the borrowed habit makes the possibility of escape visible without requiring every hand and weapon to be assigned a certain action.
The Museo de Arte de Ponce describes the scene as fictional, set against the Spanish Inquisition. The title’s date, 1559, belongs to that imagined episode, while Millais painted it in 1857. His wife Effie’s account describes the penitential clothing and the practical work with models, providing evidence about the painting’s making rather than proving a particular historical escape.
Featured in: John Everett Millais’s Bible Paintings: The Holy Family That Made Dickens Furious
What does Psalm 124:7 mean?
Psalm 124 gives Israel a communal song of deliverance from overwhelming danger. Verse 7 compares escape to a bird released from a broken snare, and the final verse locates help in the Creator. The image of the torn net makes survival something received rather than a boast of invulnerability.
The pairing is thematic: the psalm does not refer to the Inquisition or Millais’s fictional prisoner. The disguised figures and broken pattern of custody offer a human scene of escape through which to consider its language. The painting’s religious conflict and the psalm’s ancient setting remain distinct.
Psalm 124:7 supplies an image of escape from captivity that resonates with the painting’s fictional rescue.
Sources
Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico (65.0568); oil on canvas, arched top, 109.5 × 79.1 cm.
John Everett Millais’s Bible Paintings: The Holy Family That Made Dickens Furious. Artwork reading adapted from this guide.
Psalm 124 — Berean Standard Bible. Context for Psalm 124:7.
Also from Psalm:NativityMorning Prayer
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