What Does Isaiah 11:7 Mean?
And the cow and the bear will graze, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.THE KEY
The verse imagines peace changing what the lion eats, not merely where it lies.
THE MEANING
This verse holds open a world where creatures once arranged as threats and prey share nourishment, and the lion’s appetite no longer demands another creature’s life. Wholeness reaches into instinct and provision, not only outward behavior.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that safety requires keeping some creatures under threat, or that a predator’s way can never change.
THE ROOT
תִּרְעֶינָה
tirʿeynah
GROWS FROM
רעה
r-ʿ-h
To tend, pasture, feed, or graze.
“graze” in this verse is tirʿeynah. The verb translated feed shares its root with the word for shepherd, so nourishment carries the language of tending as well as grazing. The animals’ changed relation is pictured through common sustenance; the sharper turn is that the lion’s food changes too.
ALSO GROWS
roʿeh: One who shepherds or tends a flock.
רֹעֶה
The same root extends pasture into the act of tending, giving shared feeding a pastoral resonance.
mirʿeh: Pasture or grazing land.
מִרְעֶה
The pasture is the place that sustains grazing animals; the scene is organized around shared provision.
THE PATTERN
Wholeness reshapes the conditions of life until creatures share safety and the old order of harm loses its hold.
The wolf and the lamb will graze as one, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and dust will be the serpent's bread. They will not harm nor ruin in all my set-apart mountain, says the LORD.In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, with the birds of the heavens, and with the creeping things of the ground. I will break bow and sword and war from the earth, and I will make them lie down in safety.Because the creation itself will also be set free from the slavery of decay into the weighty freedom of the children of God.THE THREAD
The wolf and the lamb will graze as one, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and dust will be the serpent's bread. They will not harm nor ruin in all my set-apart mountain, says the LORD.The Hebrew verb for feed, תִּרְעֶינָה (tirʿeynah, feed or graze), comes from רעה (raʿah, tend or pasture), the same root used in this verse. Isaiah repeats the shared grazing and the lion eating straw, expanding the image into an order where former opposites share provision.
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