The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatted beast together, and a little child shall lead them.
Isaiah 11 opens with a King rising from the line of Jesse, ruling in righteousness (verses 1–5). Verse 6 then shows what that rule does to the world itself, starting with the animals that now tear each other apart. The picture raises one sharp question: is this poetry about changed hearts, or a real change coming to real creatures?
Commentators place this promise in a coming age on this earth, not in heaven. One writer asks what ground there is to doubt it:
It is the world, the habitable earth to come, "of which we are speaking" (Heb. 2:5) — not heaven, but earth, and especially the land of Israel under Him whose right it is. What ground is there to doubt its plain and exact fulfilment? … Why should anyone think it impossible that God, in honour of the reign of Jesus, will change more than the face of nature? He will change the habits and instincts of every living creature, freeing creation from the bondage of corruption under which it now groans.
The list is not random. Isaiah sets each predator beside the prey it hunts today.
Missionaries would tell us, we believe, that killing and eating a young goat holds a special attraction for the leopard, just as the wolf preys on lambs by nature. All creation will be at peace and all fierceness gone — even the poisonous serpent stripped of its venom and its desire to bite.
Commentators differ on whether the beasts stand for men. One writer says the wolf is still a wolf here, so the picture cannot be only about changed hearts:
The wolf, the leopard and the lion are shown as still existing, set against the lamb, the young goat, the calf and the more general "fatling" — but with their instincts for prey completely gone. Taken as a picture of the soul, how strange to sort people into such classes, when the gospel declares that all are lost and ungodly on one side, and that all believers are equally saved and children of God on the other! … Until then, faith counts on the power God gives against a state of disorder, as when David saved the lamb and killed both the lion and the bear.
Another writer holds both together — the animals change, and they also picture something in us:
The wolf, the leopard and the young lion will stop killing, of course. But there is more in the passage than that. These fierce beasts represent the lust for blood and power in men, the cause of all the strife … But all that will be changed. … God's power will do this. Men will be born again.
Commentators trace the violence in nature back to Adam's fall. Everything placed under the first man went down with him:
Because the sin of Adam had effects far beyond his own race: all that was put under his dominion got into ruin and disorder. And this is not a mere imaginative notion of ruin, nor a fanciful reading of Old Testament prophecy. It is the doctrine plainly and positively laid down in Rom. 8. It says there that "the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it" — a clear reference to the fall of the one who was set over creation. He fell; and creation, being under the headship of Adam, fell along with him.
The verse ends with a child, not a lion tamer. The smallest figure in the picture is the one who leads.
Man boasts of his efforts, and they often fail. In this remarkable passage of Isaiah 11, God shows how He accomplishes His purposes and removes every trace of the power of evil — through a "little child." The word in the original could be translated "little finger." Before this tiny symbol the whole power and ferocity described in the earlier verses collapses. God fills the whole earth with His glory, blesses the people, and secures a resting place of glory.
- Cause — Creation's savagery is not original. Adam fell, and everything under his dominion fell with him.
- Cure — The verse follows a King described in verses 1–5. Peace among the animals is the overflow of righteousness on a throne.
- Reach — The healing extends past people to wolves, leopards and lions. Nothing under the curse is left outside the repair.
- Reversal — Predators keep their nature but lose their appetite for prey. The weakest figure in the picture, a little child, walks in front.
- Result — Not a distant heaven, but this earth restored. That is why commentators refuse to reduce the promise to a metaphor.
And the cow and the she-bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
Isaiah's picture of the coming reign reaches down to the feeding habits of animals. A cow and a bear graze side by side. Their young lie together, and a lion lives on straw. The verse raises two plain questions. Is this meant literally? And what could bring such a change about?
This scene belongs to the reign described earlier in the chapter. The animals change because of that reign. One writer answers the objection that such a change is unthinkable:
Why should anyone think it impossible that God, in honour of the reign of Jesus, will change all living nature — not only its face, but its habits and bent? He will deliver the creature from the bondage of corruption under which it now groans. Jehovah declares that the days must surely come when the ploughman will overtake the reaper, and the one who treads grapes will overtake the one who sows seed. Then not only the earth will answer His generous power, but the animal kingdom also.
The wording itself is the reason for reading the verse as fact. The bear is still a bear and the lion still a lion. Only the appetite has gone:
An allegorical sense does not fit the exactness of the language... The passage shows the wolf, the leopard and the lion still existing, and sets them against the lamb, the kid, the calf and the more general "fatling" — but with the instincts of prey completely gone. It speaks only of animals that once hunted, now living in peace with the gentlest cattle. So the only right way to read it is as a prediction of facts still to come.
Commentators differ on whether that exhausts the meaning. Some read the beasts as also standing for something in human beings:
The wolf and the leopard and the young lion represent the uncontrolled passions of men. These animals will no doubt stop being beasts of prey, but a greater change, because it is moral instead of physical, will take place in men, and the figure used teaches us this — a little child will be the leader.
The detail about the lion's food is the sharpest part of the verse. One writer traces it back to man's fall:
God's mercy will reach even to the animal creation. He placed it under man at the beginning, so it has suffered as a result of man's fall. Strong animals will no longer kill and devour the weak. Enemies like the wolf and the lamb will feed together. The greediest, like the lion, will be content with plant food. All hurt and destruction will cease.
The same picture reaches back to the first chapter of the Bible:
Verse 30 of that chapter expressly assigns every green plant to every beast of the earth. The same text proves that at this time "every animal in the earth was herbivorous"... No believer should question that past fact, if inspired prophecy assures him that the day is coming when the wolf will dwell with the lamb and the leopard lie down with the kid. In that day the cow and the bear will feed, their young lying down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. Here science will certainly complain and scoff.
Why do animals suffer now, and when will it end? One writer answers from Romans:
About creation, the eighth chapter of Romans tells us that "the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now." There is not an animal on earth that is free from pain. But verse twenty-one tells us of a different state of things to come: "the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God." This is, to my mind, the key to the eleventh chapter of Isaiah.
after
The blessing has one exception:
The only creature from which God does not remove the curse is the serpent. Even in that day Jehovah will remember the part the serpent played in producing the ruin He is now putting right. That is why we have the sentence, "dust shall be the serpent's food."
- Reign — God changes nature in honour of the reign of Jesus. The King comes first, and the changed creation follows.
- Release — The animals suffer because God placed them under man, and they fell with him. Their relief comes when creation is set free from its bondage to corruption.
- Reach — The blessing goes further down than nations and kings: to a cow, a bear, their young, and a lion's daily food.
- Reality — The predators still exist. Only their appetite for prey is gone. So the words describe fact, not metaphor.
- Reminder — One creature keeps its sentence. The serpent still eats dust, a standing memory of where the ruin began.
And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the adder, and the weaned child shall put forth its hand to the viper's den.
Isaiah has been describing a coming King and the peace His reign brings. Verse 8 puts that peace at its sharpest test: two small children, one still nursing and one just weaned, playing at the holes of the deadliest snakes around them.
Older translations call these two snakes the asp and the cockatrice. One reference work traces the second name and shows why the English sounds so strange:
tsiphoni. English versions translate this word 'adder' only once, in Proverbs 23:32, and 'cockatrice' four times. Three of those — Isaiah 11:8, Isaiah 14:29 and Isaiah 59:5 — point to its poison. The fourth, Jeremiah 8:17, points to something else: it will not be charmed, but will bite. This is thought to be the 'yellow viper' of Palestine, which hides in dens and whose poison kills. Reports say it resists the skill of the snake charmers. The cockatrice was a mythical creature. The translators perhaps used its name for some unknown deadly snake.
So the picture is exact. No human skill can tame this snake, and a baby reaches into its hole.
This is not the world slowly getting better. Earlier verses describe the King Himself. What follows is the effect of His arrival.
The Lord's appearing will bring in a completely new age of triumphant power in righteous government, and will keep it so. That sets it apart from this day of grace, while Satan rules, and those who are Christ's suffer, yet overcome by faith. We wait for His coming as the end of our pilgrimage here below.
Some read the animals in these verses as pictures of different kinds of people brought together by the gospel. One writer answers that the wording will not carry that meaning:
The wolf, the leopard and the lion are still there, set against the lamb, the kid, the calf and the more general "fatling" — but their instinct to hunt has completely gone. Take it as a picture of spiritual life, and see how strange it is. It sorts people into classes, while the gospel declares all of them lost and ungodly on one side, and all believers alike saved and God's children on the other. One could understand a picture of the wolf becoming a lamb... But the actual wording rules out all such flights of fancy.
More than accuracy is at stake in how the passage is taken:
It confounds the church with Israel; it lowers the character of our blessing in Christ from heaven to earth; it weakens the word of God by introducing a haziness needful to the existence of such applications; it undermines the mercy and the faithfulness of God, because it supposes that the richest and most unconditional of His promises to Israel are, notwithstanding, taken from them and turned into the wholly different channel of ourselves. If God could so speak and act towards Israel, where is the guarantee for the Christian or the church?
The child at the snake's hole is one detail in a much larger reversal. It happens on this earth, and what changes is not the scenery but the instincts:
It is the world or inhabited earth to come, "of which we are speaking" (Hebrews 2:5) — not heaven, but earth, and especially the land of Israel under Him Whose right it is. ... Why should anyone think it impossible that God, in honour of the reign of Jesus, should change not only the face of nature but the habits and instincts of every living creature? Why should He not set creation free from the bondage of corruption under which it now groans? ... The earth is not the only thing that will answer as it should to His generous power. The animal kingdom will answer too, with the one exception that seems good to Him who does not forget the cunning evil-doer. Even now, when other and deeper questions are before Him, what pity He shows for babies and even for cattle! (See Jonah 4:11)
The snake loses its power to harm the child. It does not lose its sentence:
Think of the nursing child playing over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child putting his hand on the viper's den, and coming to no harm! What days of peace and quiet for man and beast! There will be one solemn exception to this general deliverance — the serpent. "Dust shall be the serpent's food" (Isaiah 65:25). The reason is easy to see. In this form the tempter deceived our first parents, and so brought in all the misery. God will never overlook or forget that. He will not lift the curse He pronounced in Eden on this creature (Genesis 3:14).
Another writer says what that reminder is for:
Only the serpent will keep crawling in the dust, as a lasting witness to Satan and sin. It is a warning too, for after the kingdom age Satan will be let loose for a little while (Revelation 20:7).
- The King first. The safety of the child is not a moral improvement in the world but the effect of the Lord's appearing, which opens "a wholly new age of triumphant power in righteous government."
- Then the curse. A snake that no charmer can tame loses its power to hurt. The King's reign reaches into nature itself.
- Then creation. God changes more than the face of the earth. He changes "the habits and instincts of every living creature," and the hunter stops hunting.
- Then the child. The weakest human being becomes the measure of that peace: an infant's hand where death used to wait.
- One reminder stays. Only the serpent keeps its sentence from Eden. It is a lasting witness that God never forgets how the ruin began.
They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea.
Isaiah 11 has described a King who strikes the earth with the rod of His mouth, and the chapter now closes with wolf and lamb at peace. Two questions press: how does such a world arrive, and what is an earth "full" of the knowledge of the LORD?
The promise that nothing will hurt or destroy is not poetry about human politics. Commentators read it alongside the deliverance of creation in Romans 8. They take it as a real change in the created order.
For the meaning of this expression in Romans 8, I know no better clue than what we find again and again in the Old Testament. Take Isaiah 11:6-9... Will creation not go free then? Even the tribes of savage beasts will have stopped devouring each other, and the most savage and most poisonous will be the harmless playmates of the little child.
Another writer shows how far this reaches:
This will have a literal fulfilment. Not only the church of God, Israel, and the nations, but creation too will come into wonderful blessing. The Lord will be King over all the earth.
The same writer finds one creature left outside this deliverance:
There will be one exception, and only one, to the deliverance of creation. Isaiah 65:25 describes the blessing of that age in glowing terms. Yet there we read that all the rest of creation goes free and happy, while the curse stays on the serpents — the kind of creature Satan used to deceive the first woman.
The verse links the peace to the knowledge with one word: for. One writer names two causes behind it, and marks off what the passage is not about:
In verses 5-9 we see the fruit of the curse gone from the earth. By the presence of Christ and the Spirit poured out from on high, the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters cover the sea. Christ here is not glorified above, and it is not the gospel here below.
Read the chapter in order, and the answer is uncomfortable but plain: verse 4 comes before verse 9.
We all agree that the earth is to be filled with the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea. How is this to happen? It is remarkable. In this very scripture (Isaiah 11:9), the Holy Spirit shows that judgment must come before this time of blessing... The universal spread of the knowledge of Jehovah follows His striking the earth with the rod of His mouth, and His slaying the wicked with the breath of His lips.
This verse is not alone. The same promise appears twice more, and the pattern holds each time:
Three times this "filling" is mentioned: here in this passage (Numbers 14), in Isaiah 11:9, and in Habakkuk 2:14. Each time it is connected with judgment.
These writers describe a future reign of Christ on earth, not the slow success of preaching today.
The comparison is precise. It is not about the ocean's surface but about what lies under it.
In that day the earth will not be full of the confusion and the conflicts created by the fall of man. It will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. How do the waters cover the sea-bed? They do so completely, without one crevice left unfilled.
One writer draws a sharp line between two words: knowledge and faith.
In the new age people will be blessed abundantly. But the blessing of the millennium does not exactly take the shape of belief... The earth shall be filled with the knowledge — not with the faith, but with the knowledge — of the glory of Jehovah. In countless cases it will be the fruit of true divine teaching. But knowledge describes it better than faith... They will behold the glory, they will look upon the Lord, no longer hidden but displayed.
A world full of the knowledge of God is not a world of converted hearts. One writer marks the line between what a reign can do and what it cannot:
Even the age of visible glory cannot change the heart of man... The kingdom can govern and bless but not convert man... "That day" does not mean a time when everybody will be converted. It means a time when the Lord Jesus will govern in righteousness, when He will judge open evil at once, and uphold good in a wonderful way for a thousand years.
- Judgment first. The earth is filled only after the King strikes it with the rod of His mouth. The same link with judgment shows up in Numbers 14 and Habakkuk 2:14.
- Then peace. With the fruit of the curse gone, nothing hurts or destroys — and creation itself, not just people, shares the blessing.
- Then fullness. Waters cover the sea-bed completely, leaving no crevice unfilled — that is the measure of how far this knowledge reaches.
- Knowledge, not faith. In that age people will see the Lord displayed rather than hidden; today He is known by faith.
- Yet not conversion. A reign can govern and bless, but it cannot convert; even an age of visible glory leaves the heart of man unchanged.
And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, standing as a banner of the peoples the nations shall seek it; and his resting-place shall be glory.
Isaiah has been describing a King from David's line and an earth at peace under Him. Verse 10 widens the view from Israel to the whole world. Two questions press: who is "the root of Jesse," and when do the nations seek Him?
Earlier in the chapter Christ is a shoot growing out of Jesse's stump. Here the title flips. A root does not grow from the tree; it produces it.
As the Root of Jesse He is the One from whom David originated. He is not the product, but the Producer. And this He is not by reason of His Manhood, but by reason of His Deity.
That change of title is what opens the verse out to the nations. Trace Christ up from Israel, and His links are with that one people. Start with Him as the source, and every nation comes into view.
So if the Shoot makes us think of Christ in His holy Manhood, the Root makes us think of Him in His Deity. In His Manhood He sprang out of Israel, and had special links with that people. Bring in His Godhead, and all men come at once into view… Here the word "people" should be "peoples" — that is, the nations at large. To them the Root will stand as an "ensign" or "banner," and the Gentiles will seek Him. And "His rest will be glory."
A "signal" here is an ensign, or banner — a standard raised in the open so people can see it and come. One writer describes the nations once they arrive.
So the Gentiles will then be brought to the feet of Jesus. They will be, so to speak, clothed and sitting at the feet of the true King.
The verse carries a date: "in that day." Commentators point out that our own hour looks nothing like it. God is doing something different in the meantime.
Verse 10 has not come true at all yet. Christ is an object of reproach, not of glory. But in that day He will be the centre, and then the Gentiles will seek Him. Now is the hour when God the Father seeks true worshippers, a people from among the Gentiles for His name.
Paul draws on this chapter in Romans 15. Yet the same apostle marks off what God is doing now from what Isaiah describes.
The apostle can and does quote from the prophets, and from this very chapter of our prophet (Rom. 15:12). He does so to uphold a principle the gospel shows so clearly: God blesses the Gentiles, and they glorify God for His mercy. But the same apostle also holds that God has now revealed a mystery hidden from ages and generations — the mystery of Christ and the church, in which there is neither Jew nor Gentile. That stands in the fullest contrast with the great day when Israel and the nations will be blessed as such, each in its own place, under Messiah's reign on open display.
The verses that follow speak of God gathering scattered Israel a second time. That return is no side note. It opens the way for the rest of the world.
But this is not all. Israel must be received back so that the world may know life from the dead.
Israel holds the central place on earth, yet the nations are not left outside it.
Israel will then be the centre of the blessing on earth, yet "in Him shall the Gentiles trust."… "All nations shall call Him blessed."
The last clause answers the world's long history of unrest. The same Person the world cast out becomes its resting place.
Israel will gather round the One they once rejected. The Gentiles, who in Pilate joined together to cast Christ out of this world, will seek Him. Ever since the world rejected Christ it has known nothing but conflict and unrest. But when He returns His resting place will be glorious. His glory filling the earth will mark the rest that this poor world will enjoy under Christ.
- Root — Christ is not David's product but David's Producer; the title reaches past His manhood to His deity.
- Banner — because He is the Root, He stands as a banner for the peoples, not for one nation only, and they gather to Him.
- Nations — the Gentiles come and sit at the feet of the true King; Paul cites this chapter for God's mercy to the nations.
- Israel — the same day brings Israel back, and through that return the world knows life from the dead.
- Rest — the world has known only conflict since it cast Christ out. In Him it finds its resting place, and that rest is glory.