A lone goat, a scarlet cloth wound around its horns, stands on the salt-crusted shore of the Dead Sea, with the mountains of Edom glowing in the distance. William Holman Hunt painted it at Osdoom, a site the scholar Louis de Saulcy had identified as the original Sodom. Hunt had learned that on the Day of Atonement a goat was sent out from the temple with a piece of scarlet cloth on its head, standing for the sins of the congregation; it was believed the cloth would turn white if the sins were forgiven. He saw the Old Testament scapegoat as an equivalent of Christ, whose suffering and death likewise took away the sins of others. William Hesketh Lever bought the painting in 1923 for £4,950.

It is in the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight.