What Does Isaiah 11:7 Mean in the King James?
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 analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
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.
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 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.And in that day will I make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground: and I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth, and will make them to lie down safely.Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.THE THREAD
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 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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