During the summer of 1882 Van Gogh was living with Christine Clasina Hoornik (Sièn) who had been abandoned when pregnant by a previous lover. This relationship cost him the friendship of at least one close friend, the painter Maeve, on top of which Vincent's father proposed to have him committed to a mental hospital in Gheel (Belgium). He was also being treated for veneral disease. Despite the propensity for melancholic reflection that these vicissitudes inspired in Vincent he remained remarkably steadfast in his work:

... In life it is the same as in drawing--one must sometimes act
quickly and decisively, attack a thing with energy, trace the
outlines as quickly as lightning.

This is no time for hesitation or doubt; the hand must not
tremble, nor must the eye wander, but remain fixed on what is
before one. And one must be so absorbed in it that in a short
time something has been brought onto the paper or the canvas
which was not there before, in such a way that later one hardly
knows how it was hammered off. The period of discussing and
thinking must precede the decisive action. There is little room
for reflection or argument in the action itself ... (T 197)

In December, 1882 he completed this and two other drawings using the same model. One of them shows the elderly mutton-chop whiskered man standing and reading (SD1683) but Le Bible (F 1001) is a very similar composition to this work, the figure seated and in profile, concentrating. Vincent mentions them in a letter to Theo.

I have two new drawings now, one of a man reading his Bible, and
the other of a man saying grace before his dinner, which is on
the table. Both are certainly done in what you may call an
old-fashioned sentiment--they are figures like the little old
man with his head in his hands. The "Bénédicité" is, I
think, the best, but they complement each other. (T 253)