Ver. 6. "_And the wolf dwelleth with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf, and, the lion and the fatling together, and a little child leads them._"
Ver. 7. "_The cow and bear go to the pasture; their young ones lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox._" (The going to pasture of the bear corresponds with the lion's eating straw [comp. Gen. i. 30], and we are not allowed to supply the "together" in the first clause.)
Ver. 8. "_And the sucking child playeth on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child putteth his hand into the den of the basilisk._"
The change in the irrational creation described in the preceding verses is a consequence of the removal of sin in the rational creation; this removal the Prophet now proceeds to describe.
Ver. 9. "_They shall not do evil, and shall not sin in all my holy mountain, for the earth is full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters covering the sea._"
The subject are the dwellers in the Holy Mountain. The Holy Mountain can, according to the _usus loquendi_, be Mount Zion only, and not, as was last maintained by _Hofmann_, the whole land of Canaan, which is never designated in that manner; comp. chap. xxvii. 13, and my Commentary on Ps. lxxviii. 54. The second part of the verse, connected with the first by means of _for_, agrees with the first only in the event that Mount Zion is viewed as the spiritual dwelling place of the inhabitants of the earth, just as, under the Old Testament dispensation, it was the _ideal_ dwelling place of all the Israelites, even of those who outwardly had not their residence at Jerusalem; on the spiritual dwelling of the servants of the Lord with Him in the temple, compare remarks on Ps. xxvii. 4, xxxvi. 9, lxv. 5, lxxxiv. 3, and other passages. In chap. ii. 2-4, lxvi. 23, the Holy Mountain, too, appears as the centre of the whole earth in the Messianic time. From chap. xix. 20, 21, where, in the midst of converted Egypt, an altar is built, and sacrifices are offered up, it appears that it is this in an _ideal_ sense only, that under its image the _Church_ is meant. The designation, "my Holy Mountain," intimates that the state of things hitherto, when unholiness prevailed in the Kingdom of the Holy God, is an unnatural one; that at some future period the _idea_ necessarily must manifest its power and right in opposition to the _reality_.--In the second clause, the ground and fountain of this sinlessness is stated. In Zion, in the Church of God, there will then be no more any sins; for the earth is then full of the knowledge of the Lord, by which the sins are done away with. The general outpouring of the Holy Ghost forms one of the characteristics of the Messianic time; and the _consequence_ of this outpouring is, according to ver. 2, the knowledge of the Lord,--so that the clause may be thus paraphrased: For, in consequence of the Spirit poured out, in the first instance, upon Him, the earth is full of the knowledge of the Lord; comp. chap. xxxii. 15: "Until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high;" liv. 13; Joel iii. 1; ii. 28; Jer. xxxi. 34, That הארץ is here not the "land," or "country," but the "_earth_" is sufficiently evident from the antithesis of the _sea_: as the _sea_ is full of water, so the _earth_ is full of the knowledge of the Lord. To this [Pg 124] reason it may still be added that in vers. 6-8 changes are spoken of, which concern the whole territory of the earthly creation, the παλιγγενεσία of the whole earth. As the relation of these changes to that which is stated here is that of cause and effect, here, too, the whole earth can only be thought of _Finally_,--The following verse too supposes the spreading of salvation over the whole earth. The entire relation of the first section to the second and third makes it obvious that by הארץ the whole earth is to be understood. The passage under consideration is alluded to in Hab. ii. 14: "For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters covering the sea." In that passage, the enforced knowledge of the Divine glory which manifests itself in punitive justice, forms the subject of discourse; but that enforced knowledge forms the necessary condition of the knowledge which is voluntary and saving.