The Coming Paradise (Isaiah 11:5-10).
And now, having depicted a situation where good will triumph and evil perish, where all will be just and right, where everything will be in accord with the holiness and justice of God, Isaiah goes on to finalise the perfect picture. The King will rule in righteousness (Isaiah 11:5), and even throughout the animal kingdom peace and harmony will reign. For He is the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 11:6-9), while the nations and peoples will seek to the root of Jesse, and find a glorious resting place, in the same way as the animals will, a resting place provided by Him.
Many seek to depict these scenes as though they applied to a kingdom on earth, but a few moments thought will reveal the impossibility of such a situation. Such justice and righteousness can only be applicable where men are totally good. Otherwise men could not live with such righteousness and life would not be liveable. This is not describing a kingdom age where right conflicts with wrong, but a golden age in the new heavens and the new earth when all is harmony (Isaiah 66:22 and see Isaiah 65:17-25). A time when death is no more. It is an idealistic picture, not one of which the details should be pressed. Both nature and man will have come to their consummation. (And to suggest that while all this peace and harmony within creation is going on, man is busy offering sacrificial memorial offerings in the Temple would be to contradict the whole picture).
Analysis of Isaiah 11:5-10.
a And righteousness will be the girdle of His loins, and faithfulness the girdle of His reins (Isaiah 11:5).
b And the wolf will make himself at home with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the kid, and the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together, and a little child will lead them (Isaiah 11:6).
c And the cow and the bear will feed, their young ones will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox (Isaiah 11:7).
c And the suckling child will play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child will put his hand on the adder's den (Isaiah 11:8).
b They will not hurt nor destroy, in all My holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of Yahweh, as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9).
a And it will come about in that day that the root of Jesse, which stands for an ensign of the peoples, to Him will the nations seek, and His resting place will be glory (Isaiah 11:10).
In ‘a' we have the picture of the ideal king clothed for His ideal reign, and in the parallel He will be sought to by the people and His resting place for them (as for the animals and children) will be glorious. They too will enjoy His rest, as will nature. In ‘b' all the fiercest predators will be at peace with their former prey, for in the parallel they will not hurt or destroy in all His holy mountain because all will have the knowledge of Yahweh. In ‘c' all nature is at one, and in the parallel man is at one with nature.
‘And righteousness will be the girdle of his loins,
And faithfulness the girdle of his reins.'
The King will clothe Himself in righteousness and faithfulness. Righteousness will determine all His activities, and He will reveal His faithfulness by how He conducts His affairs. (‘The reins' determine control and direction). For all things will be ruled in righteousness in His righteous kingdom, so that all nature will be in harmony and men will seek to Him and enjoy His glorious resting place.
‘And the wolf will make himself at home with the lamb,
And the leopard will lie down with the kid,
And the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together,
And a little child will lead them.
And the cow and the bear will feed,
Their young ones will lie down together,
And the lion will eat straw like the ox,
And the suckling child will play on the hole of the asp,
And the weaned child will put his hand on the adder's den.'
Such will be His righteous rule that all nature will be in harmony. The picture is idyllic, the hunters and the hunted sharing their food and lifestyle together and at peace, and their young all in harmony together, and all will be in harmony with man whose young will have control over all. Genesis 1:28 is finally fulfilled. No one will seek to benefit by the death of another. All predatory instincts will have ceased. So much so that the snake will no longer be man's enemy, but totally trustworthy and safe to dally with. It is the reversal of the fall in Eden. The Enemy will no longer be able to exercise his guile. There will be no killing, no bloodlust, no devouring of another, no fear, no bite of death, no fear or deceit of the snake. It will be Paradise, with evil fully defeated.
(Note: This sits ill with the suggestion made by some of a world where the cow and the lamb and the kid and the fatling have one thing to fear, being offered as an offering in an earthly Temple. That is the exact opposite of what is depicted here. There are no sacrifices here. This cannot reasonably be thought of as including such an idea. In this world no sacrifices are necessary. End of note).
Note how in Isaiah 65:25 this glorious scene is linked with the new heaven and the new earth (Isaiah 65:17).
‘They will not hurt nor destroy,
In all my holy mountain,
For the earth will be full of the knowledge of Yahweh,
As the waters cover the sea.'
Thus there will be no more death, no more hurt, no more enmity, no more tears (compare Revelation 21:3-4), for all nature will have full knowledge of Yahweh and be obedient to His will. This is a picture of the everlasting kingdom. All will be made perfect just as it was intended to be in the beginning of creation. God's holy mountain here has filled the whole earth, which is in turn filled with the knowledge of Yahweh. Knowledge here implies full understanding and harmony and response. It is a further reminder that God's holy mountain is not the same as Jerusalem (see on Isaiah 2:2-4). In Isaiah 2:3 all nations came to the mountain of Yahweh, but here the mountain of Yahweh has embraced all that remains once the wicked have been slain with the breath of His mouth. The mountain of Yahweh is greater and more spiritually widespread than Jerusalem, that is, until finally ‘Jerusalem' itself is also spoken of in universal terms (Isaiah 66:12-14; Isaiah 66:20-23; compare Galatians 4:26; Hebrews 12:22).
Thus does Isaiah present his picture of the time when God will have brought in perfection, presented in terms that the people of that time could appreciate, and yet having that added extra that warns us against taking it too literally.
‘And it will come about in that day that the root of Jesse,
Which stands for an ensign of the peoples,
To him will the nations seek,
And his resting place will be glory.'
And men too must have their part in this perfect kingdom (up to now all concentration has been on animals and little children, demonstrating its perfect innocence). The new King, the root of Jesse, will set up His banner, and all nations and people will seek to Him and enjoy His glorious resting place along with the animals and children.
So having expanded his thought to the restoring of Paradise Isaiah again brings attention back to the King. But now He is not just Jesse's seed. He is a greater than Jesse. He is the root from which Jesse springs. He is the world King. It is He, the very root of Jesse, to whom the nations will seek. He will have raised Himself as a banner, and they will flock to Him and find rest within His glory, in His glorious resting place. This is a banner of peace as is appropriate for the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). Contrast Isaiah 5:26; Isaiah 13:2. It found a glorious fulfilment when His banner was raised at Pentecost and after, and the nations flocked to His banner. Jesus may well have had this verse in mind when He promised His own that in His Father's house were many resting places (John 14:1-2).
The description of the coming One as ‘the root of Jesse' contrasts with Isaiah 11:1 and emphasises that His glory does not come from Jesse. He is the root, Jesse is the stock. So in the end He Himself is the root, the stock, the branch and everything. All eyes must be on Him.
‘In that day.' That is, in the future ‘day', whenever it is, when God brings His purposes to fruition. How long that day would be was unknown to Isaiah. It was simply the future restoration, and he did not know how long it would take. It would be a long day in our terms. It began with the restoring of the people to the land, continued when Jesus Christ first came and through the ages, and awaits its final completion at His second coming in glory when His people find rest within His glory. With God a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day (2 Peter 3:8).