Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 194 · July 13
The Wolf and the Lamb
“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.”
Put a wolf and a lamb in one field tonight and by morning there is one animal. Nothing has to be decided by either of them. The wolf is a wolf.
Two people read the line that follows very differently. One of you has seen it stitched on a nursery wall in pastel colours, and that wolf has never eaten anything. The other cannot reach the end of the verse without a particular face arriving, because a predator lived in your house or your church, and animals lying down together sounds like getting away with it.
Isaiah does not hand the second reader over to the first. Two verses above the animals: he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. The field is downstream of a judgment already carried out. Nobody is asked to share grass with something that has not been dealt with, and the reason the field holds comes at the end of the passage. 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.
The picture is not a one-off. Isaiah prints it again near the end of his book, adding a line about the serpent worth noticing, that dust shall be the serpent's meat. Hosea puts it as a treaty: I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth, and will make them to lie down safely.
Peace to you who have kept that picture on the wall; it is a true one. Peace also to you who cannot look at it yet. Isaiah does not hurry you, and he does not ask you to make peace with anything on your own account. He puts the judgment first and the field after, and he leaves the order of those two in hands that are not yours.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 194 is All Your Need Supplied (Philippians 4:19).