Sports In Sacred Art – Wrestling With Angels & Paris Olympics 2024
Jacob wrestling with an angel is a one of the most strangest stories of the Bible. Who would have thought that it’s possible. And yet – an Olympic sport came to sacred art. Wrestling.
The Story
Jacob, later he would be given the name Israel, spends the night alone on a riverside during his journey back to Canaan (basically, the territory of modern-day Israel). Suddenly, with no explanation of why and how, he meets someone who in the book of Hosea (in the Old Testament) is called “an angel”. And these two begin to wrestle. Until dawn.
While they were wrestling, Jacob told the angel “I’m not going to let you go until you bless me”. Instead of blessing Jacob right away, the angel touches Jacob’s hip with a special touch of an angel and Jacob would limp on one leg after that his whole life.
In the end of this story the angel gives Jacob the blessing. it looks like a clean win of Jacob. The angel remains incognito and doesn’t reveal his name, Jacob now will be called Israel and the place where they wrestled all night would be named by Jacob, now Israel, as Penuel, which translated from Hebrew means “Face of God” or “Facing God”. That’s our olympic and yet biblical story of Jacob wrestling an angel.
“And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day” –
The Sacred Art
asdf
Dimitri Ross
Dimitri Ross, a contemporary figurative visual artist. Based in Florence, Italy. Currently he masters the academic painting and sacred art in Florence by deepening his artistic research on painting techniques of the Italian Renaissance.
