Delacroix described this composition: "Left-hand picture. Jacob Wrestling with the Angel. Jacob is bringing the flocks and other gifts by which he hopes to assuage the ire of his brother Esau. A stranger appears who stops him and engages him in a stubborn struggle, which ends only when Jacob, wounded in the tendon of the thigh by his opponent, is made powerless. This struggle is regarded, by Holy Scripture, as a sign of the ordeals that God sometimes visits upon his chosen ones."