@adrian009 Interesting exegetical question and certainly an influential passage from Hebrew scripture which has been much discussed down the generations by Jews, Christians and most recently Baha'is.
In its original context, I've never quite been able to decide if the prophetic author was
(1) simply employing imagery lifted from the natural order to predict, in poetic language, the pacification of violent and bestial tendencies / harmful conduct among humans in the Messianic Age or
(2) literally foresaw a future epoch in which the predator/prey hierarchy in nature would be radically altered, such that all carnivores would (somehow?) be replaced with herbivores both in the animal and human kingdoms, the two reflecting each other.
To an ancient, pre-scientific imagination it is not by any means impossible that he might have thought this, even if a metaphorical interpretation is more attuned to our modern sensibilities.
The relative weight that different Christian authorities down the centuries have placed upon either one exegesis has largely had to do with whether they judged the passage to be a prophecy of
earthly peace (i.e. in a millennium / other temporal period of peace) or supramundane peace in the
World to Come, the New Heaven and Earth after the Last Judgment and the resurrection of the dead.
Most intriguingly, even though the New Testament scriptures are indeterminate on how these images in Isaiah (i.e. "wolf, lion, lamb") are to be understood, the early apostolic fathers of the Catholic Church (by which I mean all apostolic churches that hold the Patristics in reverence, such as Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox & Anglicans / Lutherans etc.) preserved an
extra-canonical saying of Jesus about this exact prophecy of Isaiah, reportedly passed down in sacred tradition from the Apostle John (who heard it himself from Jesus) to his disciple Papias of Hierapolis (born 60 A.D.) who in turn wrote an
Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord (
Greek: Λογίων Κυριακῶν Ἐξήγησις) in five books, which contained many authentic extra-biblical sayings of Jesus verbally passed down from the Apostles.
The
Exposition is sadly lost to literary history (like much of antiquity) but certain sayings from it were quoted by the church father St. Irenaeus of Lyons in 180 A.D. and by the ecclesiastical historian Eusebius in the 4th century, including the saying that interests us here about the "
wolf and lamb".
From St. Irenaeus writing in the second century A.D.:
CHURCH FATHERS: Against Heresies, V.33 (St. Irenaeus)
The predicted blessing, therefore, belongs unquestionably to the times of the kingdom, when the righteous shall bear rule upon their rising from the dead; when also the creation, having been renovated and set free, shall fructify with an abundance of all kinds of food, from the dew of heaven, and from the fertility of the earth: as the elders who saw John, the disciple of the Lord, related that they had heard from him how the Lord Jesus used to teach in regard to these times, and say:
"
The days will come, in which vines shall grow, each having ten thousand branches, and in each branch ten thousand twigs, and in each true twig ten thousand shoots, and in each one of the shoots ten thousand clusters, and on every one of the clusters ten thousand grapes, and every grape when pressed will give five and twenty metretes of wine. And when any one of the saints shall lay hold of a cluster, another shall cry out, I am a better cluster, take me; bless the Lord through me. In like manner [the Lord declared] that a grain of wheat would produce ten thousand ears, and that every ear should have ten thousand grains, and every grain would yield ten pounds (quinque bilibres) of clear, pure, fine flour; and that all other fruit-bearing trees, and seeds and grass, would produce in similar proportions (secundum congruentiam iis consequentem); and that all animals feeding [only] on the productions of the earth, should [in those days] become peaceful and harmonious among each other, and be in perfect subjection to man."
4. And these things are borne witness to in writing by Papias, the hearer of John, and a companion of Polycarp, in his fourth book; for there were five books compiled (συντεταγμένα) by him. And he says in addition,
"Now these things are credible to believers. And he says that, when the traitor Judas did not give credit to them, and put the question, 'How then can things about to bring forth so abundantly be wrought by the Lord.' the Lord Jesus declared, 'They who shall come to these [times] shall see.'"
When prophesying of these times, therefore, Isaiah says: "The wolf also shall feed with the lamb, and the leopard shall take his rest with the kid; the calf also, and the bull, and the lion shall eat together; and a little boy shall lead them. The ox and the bear shall feed together, and their young ones shall agree together; and the lion shall eat straw as well as the ox. And the infant boy shall thrust his hand into the asp's den, into the nest also of the adder's brood; and they shall do no harm, nor have power to hurt anything in my holy mountain." And again he says, in recapitulation, "Wolves and lambs shall then browse together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and the serpent earth as if it were bread; and they shall neither hurt nor annoy anything in my holy mountain, says the Lord." Isaiah 40:6, etc.
I am quite aware that some persons endeavour to refer these words to the case of savage men, both of different nations and various habits, who come to believe, and when they have believed, act in harmony with the righteous. But although this is [true] now with regard to some men coming from various nations to the harmony of the faith, nevertheless in the resurrection of the just [the words shall also apply] to those animals mentioned. For God is rich in all things.
And it is right that when the creation is restored, all the animals should obey and be in subjection to man, and revert to the food originally given by God (for they had been originally subjected in obedience to Adam), that is, the productions of the earth. But some other occasion, and not the present, is [to be sought] for showing that the lion shall [then] feed on straw. And this indicates the large size and rich quality of the fruits. For if that animal, the lion, feeds upon straw [at that period], of what a quality must the wheat itself be whose straw shall serve as suitable food for lions?
St. Irenaeus aids us here in two respects: we learn from him that there was a widely known and apparently authentic extra-canonical saying of Jesus disseminated in the early church, derived from the Apostle John, which seemingly interpreted Isaiah's prophecy
literally: the natural order would actually, in a future peaceful epoch, produce superabundance of grain/grapes/fruits of the earth and annul subsistence living, and that this would (again literally) occur in tandem with the abolition of violence not merely among human beings but animal species as well, such that there will no longer be any predator species but only herbivores.
But, St. Irenaeus also informs us that there was a parallel contingent in the early church ("some persons") who understood the prophecy (and perhaps the Jesus saying as well)
figuratively as applying to "
savage men" of different nations and races who come to believe in the gospel and so abandon violence altogether. He appears to cite the saying of Jesus attested by Papias as an authority to somewhat counter, or at least modify, the claims of this other group in the early church, arguing that whilst what they said was 'true' and even beginning
now (with conversions of pagans of different nations within and without the Roman Empire to Christianity) that after the "
resurrection of the dead" it would become true also of animals (in a 'new heaven and earth' maybe after the destruction of this universe? although Irenaues doesn't quite clarify if he means this, which most modern Christians believe as well, or if he's talking about our actual earth as it is right now being transformed in the Messianic Age, which is rather more difficult to accept I think we'd both agree!).
The 'savage men' interpretation is perhaps strengthened by the fact that Jewish authors - both Rabbinic and early Christian - had a habit of referring to sinners metaphorically as different kinds of animals (i.e. John of Patmos in the
Book of Revelation refers to certain sinners as "
dogs: those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters" (Revelation 22:15), whilst in the Tanakh, we have authors in the Psalms referring to sinners as "
bulls of Bashan" (Psalm 22:12)).
In later centuries, this figurative interpretation has been more favoured: for example, Venerable Bartholomew Holzhauser writing in the 17th century (
Interpretatio Apocalypsin (1648)):
“A great change will come to pass, such as no mortal man will have expected. A new mankind will come into existence. And the great monarch of the world will create new laws for the new mankind and will cause a new age to begin, in which there will be only one flock and one shepherd, and peace will be of long, long duration, for the glory of God in heaven and on earth...Now the Great Monarch also will dominate over all the "beasts of the earth", that is to say over the barbarian nations...
The sacerdocy will flower more than ever, and men will seek the kingdom of God in all solicitude...Many saints and doctors will flourish in the earth. Men will love reason and justice. Peace will reign in all the universe, because the divine power will bind Satan for many years, until the son of perdition will rave anew...
It is in that age that the relation of the sixth Spirit of the Lord will be known, that is to say the Spirit of Wisdom that God diffuses over all the surfaces of the globes in those times. The sciences will be multiplied and complete on the earth. Men will be enlightened, so much as in the natural sciences and in the celestial sciences.
Now all these characters convene perfectly in the sixth age, in which they will have love, concord and perfect peace. Men will live in peace, each in his own field. They will be reconciled with the one God. Man himself will be so astonishingly changed by the hand of God, such that no one can imagine humanity..."
(Venerable Bartholomew Holzauser (1613-1658))