What Does Isaiah 65:25 Mean?
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.
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
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the LORD.THE KEY
The mountain is whole when a wolf can share pasture with a lamb without making it prey.
THE MEANING
The reader is shown a life where the wolf and lamb share food, and the lion’s strength no longer requires flesh. The serpent still eats dust, yet harm and destruction do not spread through the LORD’s set-apart mountain. Wholeness appears in changed appetites and in the safety of those who share the same ground.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this dissolves is that the strong must consume the vulnerable to remain strong.
THE ROOT
יִרְעוּ
yir'u
GROWS FROM
רעה
To pasture or tend; the root also gives the word for shepherd.
“graze” in this verse is yir'u. The Hebrew verb behind “feed” belongs to the same root family as shepherding and pasture: provision, tending, and grazing grow from one word family. The image is a shared field where the wolf’s presence no longer turns the lamb into food.
ALSO GROWS
ro'eh: Shepherd or tender of a flock
רֹעֶה
The root’s sense of feeding carries a shade of tending and care, not only consuming.
mir'eh: Pasture or grazing place
מִרְעֶה
The shared pasture gives the wolf and lamb a common place to feed.
THE PATTERN
The LORD’s wholeness removes the conditions that make shared life suffer harm and decay.
They will not do harm and will not ruin in all my set-apart mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowing of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.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.And God wipes away every tear from their eyes, and there is no more death, nor mourning, nor crying, nor pain, for the first things have gone away.THE THREAD
And the LORD God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. On your belly you shall crawl, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.Both verses use עָפָר (ʿāfār, dust), but Isaiah calls it the serpent’s bread while setting the scene where harm and destruction are absent. The shared word keeps the serpent’s dust-eating image within the vision of shared life, rather than letting it eclipse the verse’s full scope.
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