What Does Isaiah 65:25 Mean in the King James?
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 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 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.
“feed together” 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 shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.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.And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.THE THREAD
And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy 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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