Isaiah 11:6

And the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb,.... This, and the three following verses Isaiah 11:7, describe the peaceableness of the Messiah's kingdom; and which the Targum introduces in this manner,

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 fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb.

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, & c.; the creatures shall be restored to that state of innocency in which they were before the fall of man. But this is not to be understood literally, which is a gross and vain conceit of some Jews; but spiritually and metaphorically, as is evident. And the sense of the metaphor is this, Men of fierce, and cruel, and ungovernable dispositions, shall be so transformed by the preaching of the gospel, and by the grace of Christ, that they shall become most humble, and gentle, and tractable, and shall no more vex and persecute those meek and poor ones mentioned , but shall become such as they; of which we have instances in Saul being made a Paul, and in the rugged jailer, Acts 16, and in innumerable others. But how can this be applied to Hezekiah with any colour? A little child shall lead them; they will submit their proud and rebellious wills to the conduct and command of the meanest persons that speak to them in Christ’ s name.

Isaiah 11:6 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 fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.Ver. 6. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb.] Not worrying as he was wont, but made tame and tractable. Lo, such a blessed change is wrought in all true converts, as is to be seen in Paul, that wolf of the tribe of Benjamin, prophesied of by Jacob, as some hold. And the like may be said of Petrus Paulus Vergerius, once the Pope’ s nuncio, but afterwards a great preacher of the gospel. Hugh Latimer, once as obstinate a Papist as any was in England - they are his own words - but converted by blessed Bilney, as he called him usually, he became a zealous promoter of the truth according to godliness, confessor general to all Protestants troubled in mind, and the treasury into which restored ill-gotten goods were cast, to be bestowed on the poor according to his discretion, And the leopard shall lie down with the kid.] As they did at the creation, and afterward in Noah’ s ark; all bloodiness and rapine laid aside. Those that love not one another out of a pure heart fervently, but are filled with envy, malice, debate, deceit, malignity, are none of Christ’ s subjects, nor fellow-citizens with the saints. And a little child shall lead them.] That is, the child Jesus, say some interpreters, by the conduct of his Holy Spirit; or the apostles and other godly ministers, who were counted but as little children to the Pharisees and philosophers, called the grandees and "princes of this world." But they do best that understand it of such a tractableness and teachableness in Christians, that they can be content to learn of any one, though never so mean, that can better inform them. See this in Apollos. Augustine, as himself witnesseth thus in one of his epistles, En adsum senex a iuvene coepiscopo, episcopus tot annorum a collega nondum anniculo paratus sum discere, I am here an old man, ready to learn from a young man, my coadjutor in the ministry; and so old a bishop, from one who hath scarce been a year in the service. Hippocrates adviseth men not to slack or disdain to learn even of those who are counted idiots. Sleidan, lib. xxi., p. 650. Bucholc., A.D. 1548. Act, and Mon., 919; Fuller’ s Church History, fol. 405. Ut vel ex puero, i.e., ex inopi et simplici quovis. - Scultet. Mηοκνεεινκαιπαραιδιωτεονιστορεειν.

(6) The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb . . .—It is significant of the prophet’s sympathy with the animal world that he thinks of that also as sharing in the blessings of redemption. Rapine and cruelty even there were to him signs of an imperfect order, or the consequences of a fall, even as to St. Paul they witnessed of a “bondage of corruption” (Romans 8:21). The very instincts of the brute creation should be changed in “the age to come,” and “the lion should eat straw like the ox.” Men have discussed the question whether and when the words shall receive a literal fulfilment, and the answer to that question lies behind the veil. It may be that what we call the laws of animal nature in these respects are tending to a final goal, of which the evolution that has tamed the dog, the bull, the horse, is as it were a pledge and earnest (Soph., Antig., 342-351). It may be, however, that each form of brute cruelty was to the prophet’s mind the symbol of a human evil, and the imagery admits, therefore, of an allegorical rather than a literal interpretation. The classical student will remember the striking parallelism of the fourth Eclogue of Virgil, which, in its turn, may have been a far-off echo of Isaiah’s thoughts, floating in the air or embodied in apocryphal Sibylline Oracles among the Jews of Alexandria and Rome.

Verse 6. The wolf also shall, c. - "Then shall the wolf," c.] The idea of the renewal of the golden age, as it is called, is much the same in the Oriental writers with that of the Greeks and Romans: - the wild beasts grow tame serpents and poisonous herbs become harmless all is peace and harmony, plenty and happiness: - Occidet et serpens, et fallax herba veneni Occidet. VIRG. Eclog. iv. 24. "The serpent's brood shall die. The sacred ground Shall weeds and noxious plants refuse to bear." ____Nec magnos metuent armenta leones. VIRG. Eclog. iv. 22. "Nor shall the flocks fear the great lions." Non lupus insidias explorat ovilia circum, Nec gregibus nocturnus obambulat: acrior illum Cura domat: timidae damae cervique fugaces Nunc interque canes, et circum tecta vagantur. VIRG. Georg. iii. 537. "The nightly wolf that round the enclosure prowled, To leap the fence, now plots not on the fold: Tamed with a sharper pain, the fearful doe And flying stag amidst the greyhounds go; And round the dwellings roam, of man, their former foe." DRYDEN. Nec vespertinus circumgemit ursus ovile, Nec intumescit alta viperis humus. HOR. Epod. xvi. 51. "Nor evening bears the sheepfold growl around, Nor mining vipers heave the tainted ground." Εσταιδητουτ' αμαρ, ὁπηνικανεβρονενευνᾳ Καρχαροδωνδινεσθαιιδωνλυκοςουκεθελησει. THEOC. Idyl. xxiv. 84. There shall be a time when the ravenous wolf shall see the kid lying at ease, and shall feel no desire to do it an injury. I have laid before the reader these common passages from the most elegant of the ancient poets, that he may see how greatly the prophet on the same subject has the advantage upon the comparison; how much the former fall short of that beauty and elegance, and variety of imagery, with which Isaiah has set forth the very same ideas. The wolf and the leopard not only forbear to destroy the lamb and the kid, but even take their abode and lie down together with them. The calf, and the young lion, and the fatling, not only come together, but are led quietly in the same band, and that by a little child. The heifer and the she-bear not only feed together, but even lodge their young ones, for whom they used to be most jealously fearful, in the same place. All the serpent kind is so perfectly harmless, that the sucking infant and the newly weaned child puts his hand on the basilisk's den, and plays upon the hole of the aspic. The lion not only abstains from preying on the weaker animals, but becomes tame and domestic, and feeds on straw like the ox. These are all beautiful circumstances, not one of which has been touched upon by the ancient poets. The Arabian and Persian poets elegantly apply the same ideas to show the effects of justice impartially administered, and firmly supported, by a great and good king: - "Mahmoud the powerful king, the ruler of the world, To whose tank the wolf and the lamb come, together to drink." FERDUSI.

Ch. Isaiah 11:1-9. The Messiah and His KingdomIt is interesting to compare this passage with ch. Isaiah 9:1-7. There the delineation of the Messianic age starts from its broadest and most general features—the light breaking on the land, the universally diffused joy of the redeemed nation—and only at the end centres itself in the person of the Wonderful Child who is born to ascend the throne. Here the person of the Messiah comes first, and then the healing and regenerating influences of which he is the channel. To what period of Isaiah’s career the prophecy belongs cannot be determined. The affinity with ch. Isaiah 9:1-7 suggests the reign of Ahaz, to which it is assigned by Guthe in accordance with a particular theory of the development of Isaiah’s eschatology. But since there is no evidence that the idea of the Messianic King ever lost its significance to the prophet’s mind, it might with equal propriety be referred to any subsequent period of his ministry. Duhm places this and the companion oracles of Isa 2:2-4, Isaiah 32:1-5 in the evening of Isaiah’s long life. In its present setting the passage is no doubt intended as a sequel to ch. Isaiah 10:5-34 and it might even belong to the same date.

The wolf also - In this, and the following verses, the prophet describes the effect of his reign in producing peace and tranquility on the earth.

6. Of commentators, most rationalists, and some who were not, have written of these texts as if they are to be taken literally. Not one particle of interest to the cause of truth seems to be served by so understanding them.