The wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, the calf, the young lion, and the fattened calf together; and a little child will lead them.
Wolves and lambs will one day live peacefully together, and all predators will stop killing prey.
Zoology
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The cited passage
The wolf and the lamb will feed together. The lion will eat straw like the ox. Dust will be the serpent’s food. They will not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain,” says Yahweh.
What current science says
Predators can't just 'stop' being predators. A wolf's entire anatomy — forward-facing eyes for depth perception, powerful jaw muscles producing 400 PSI of bite force, digestive system optimized for meat, pack-hunting social structure — is built for killing. Wolves can't survive on grass; they lack the multi-chambered stomachs, specialized gut bacteria, and cellulose-digesting enzymes that herbivores have. And the ecological consequences would be catastrophic: without predators, prey populations explode, overgraze their habitat, and crash in mass starvation. Yellowstone proved this — removing wolves devastated the entire ecosystem until they were reintroduced in 1995.
What the text says
This comes from Isaiah 11:6 and 65:25. 'The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid' — a future paradise where all predation ceases and predators become herbivores.
Three honest ways to read this passage
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As history
The text records how its authors understood the world with the knowledge they had. Read this way, a difference from modern science is a window into the ancient mind, not a failure.
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As accommodation
The text speaks to its first audience in their own terms, to make a point that isn't mainly about physics or biology. Read this way, the scientific detail is the vehicle, not the cargo.
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As contradiction
The text makes a claim about the physical world that modern findings dispute. Read this way, the difference is a genuine factual disagreement worth naming.
GEBible doesn't pick one of these for you. Each entry shows the passage, what it says, and what current science says — nothing more.