“The wolf dwells with the lamb, and the leopard lies down with the kid, the calf, the young lion, and the fatling all together. A small child leads them. The cow and the bear graze, while their young lie down together; the lion eats straw like the ox. The nursing infant plays over the asp’s hold, and the weaned child places its hand on the adder’s lair.” (Isaiah 11:6-8, Quinn-Miscall p.183)
Now the categories blur again. Isaiah has already blurred the lines between prophet, priest, and king, and between son of man and Son of God. The lines now blur between humans and nature, between species and species, and between future and past. Isaiah goes back to the future: back to Genesis, and forward to the re-Genesis where God creates “new heavens and a new earth.” (Isaiah 65:17 and Revelation 21:1)
We are on the line between these points of creation and re-creation. We’re a little forward in time from Isaiah, and of Jesus, and a little backward in time from the consummation. Both of those prophets saw through us to our future, and said it was much more than we could imagine.
As we read through Isaiah 11, suddenly we’re surrounded by animals and children. Isaiah 11:6-8 lists thirteen animal species and three different children at different ages. (Quinn-Miscall p.182) There’s no reason to conflate these children with the Shoot, or with each other. It’s a crowd, but they are all in a state of “shalom,” at peace.
This is no less than “the restoration of Eden on earth.” (Beale p. 690) Eden was God’s garden, described in the same way as other countries’ temple gardens in the Ancient Near East. Eden was special because YHWH dwelt there and ruled over it. Eden is the first example of the Kingdom of God, and a keystone of Jesus’s message is that the Kingdom is “at hand.”
Isaiah 11:6-8 is not the Tower of Babel, it does not come from human effort, even that of a just and righteous human, even if this person does hold the offices of prophet, priest, and king all at once. This is something only the Creator can implement. It is impossible with men but possible with God.
In this “Garden of Isaiah,” all the little fears have been subsumed before the fear of the Lord. The Prince of Peace leads the Kingdom of God, where even natural enemies are reconciled. These words will happen, even if I don’t know exactly how.
If I believe in a resurrection, I can believe in a virgin birth — and as for believing in some alimentary system changes in a large feline, why not? We’ll see exactly what it’s like when we get there. The newly-vegetarian lion, whatever that means, will still be recognizably, physically, a lion. He just won’t have to live by taking away the life of other animals. This will be a lion who lives in peace, in a nature changed and re-given by God to be much more peaceful and whole than we can imagine.
In these verses, Isaiah follows the rule, “show, don’t tell.” The word “peace”/”shalom” can’t be found here, but there’s no doubt that this is what it’s about. This is the concrete manifestation of the abstract idea of peace, the natural equivalent of peace incarnated. Although the most complete example of that would be the Prince of Peace, Jesus himself.
Other prophets tell of times when peace with God will spill over into Nature, in terms that fit with Isaiah’s vision: “In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, with the birds of the air, and with the creeping things of the ground. Bow and sword of battle I will shatter from the earth, to make them lie down safely.” (Hosea 2:18 NKJV; see also Ezekiel 34:25)
Then at the end of his great book, Isaiah 65:25 describes the “new heavens and the new earth” using the same animal species: “’The wolf and the lamb feed together, the lion eats straw like the ox, the serpent: dust is its food! They do neither evil nor corruption on My holy mountain,’ says the Lord.” (Quinn-Miscall p.123) The serpents are part of this renewed, recreated Eden, but the only thing they bite is dust.
One time, in Matthew Jesus refers to the sum total of these prophets’ visions, first and foremost Isaiah’s, where nature itself is brought into harmony and peace. We know this because he literally says “in the re-Genesis.” (Matthew 19:28)
Often “re-Genesis” is translated as “renewal” or “regeneration” or “Messianic Age,” but the word itself is a portmanteau, made by blending two other words. In Greek, it’s “paliggenesia”, made from “palin” meaning “again” and “genesis” meaning “origin” or “birth.” Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus in Chapter 1 is a “genesis,” and the greatest “genesis” of all describes the original creation of heaven, earth, and God’s chosen people.
Isaiah 11 says that Genesis can happen again, and Jesus must be referring to this vision in Matthew 19. God’s justice can transform Nature itself, that requires faith – the same faith that believes God can transform a dead body back into, and beyond, life.
Jesus’s promise that Eden will return in a “re-Genesis” comes not at the end of a sermon or on a mountain of transfiguration, but in frustration! It’s the end of a long and contentious day, after people fought constantly about laws and rules and boundaries. Matthew doesn’t say, but it feels like it was a Monday (or would that be Sunday for them?).
Matthew 19 describes three disagreements before Jesus mentions the re-Genesis at the end. In all three, people are resisting Jesus about who fits into God’s kingdom, and the objections involve three topics that we still fight over today: marriage, kids, and money. In each one, Jesus brings people back to God by bringing them back to Eden, both as depicted in Genesis and in Isaiah.
First the Pharisees ask Jesus what good reasons for divorce are. Jesus cites Genesis to overrule Deuteronomy. In Eden, God made the married couple one, so breaking the one into two is very hard to do. We re-create Eden and participate in God’s kingdom by mirroring the image of His faithfulness. If it’s God’s own gift, if God is with us in it, we shouldn’t send it back or throw it away. This astonished the disciples (19:10), but Jesus doubled down (19:11). Faithful marriage recreates a little bit of Eden.
“Then comes baby in the baby carriage.” The second dispute is between the disciples and those who wanted to bring children to Jesus. Jesus overruled the disciples, receiving the children. But this is about more than tolerating snot-nosed kids. Isaiah describes the coming Kingdom of God as populated with all sort of different kinds of children. The children even lead in Isaiah 11:6. Both Isaiah and Jesus were certain that the Kingdom of God was filled with the children of God, in some cases, very literally children. This means receiving and delighting in children is a path back to Eden.
The third fight is about money. It doesn’t start out that way: a young man approaches Jesus and asks how to be saved. This reminds me of students asking, “What do we need to know for the test?” Jesus answers in the young man’s terms, saying basically, live by the Ten Commandments. The young man says, “I’ve passed that test … but I’m still missing something.”
Then Jesus moves beyond the law and beyond appearances, and makes an absolute demand on the young man’s own heart: “sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” (19:21) The young man’s possessions were given to him by God, but he clings to them like a life preserver even when Jesus himself is standing there, his hand outstretched. Your possessions are not really yours. If you think they are, then they possess you. This too astonishes the disciples. Jesus is constantly standing firm, and the disciples must be worn out by the conflict.
All three of these fights are about the gifts of God. Marriage is a gift like a carefully arranged stained glass window, arranged and given by God Himself; children are a gift made to be taught and blessed and after two decades, given away themselves — possibly in marriage, possibly in singleness — to go out in the world and give of themselves; and money should be (but isn’t) the simplest of all, it is a gift made to be given away and used on others. Every dollar is on loan to you from God, like every breath you take.
But these are hard things to do, and they’re not spectacular achievements, they’re small, ordinary things. The disciples struggle with all three in some way. Jesus each time goes back to Eden. So it makes sense that Jesus goes back to Eden again, when Peter (probably in exasperation), turns to Jesus and says “We’ve given and given and then given some more! Will we get what we’re promised?” (I’m paraphrasing here but you get the idea.)
Jesus answers, “In the Re-Genesis, when Isaiah 11 and 65 come about, you will be given everything you have lost.” The God who gave these gifts of marriage, children, and money, that same God made those gifts to be given away, so God could give them again, much more than they were before. Even the prodigal son, who gave himself away for all the wrong reasons, turned and was restored to his father changed and transformed.
This eternal exchange of giving-up and given-again is baked into the universe by its Creator, because it is a fundamental, bedrock truth about Him. God’s very being is a Trinity where the three-in-one give eternally to each other. God created a world where we, as His image-bearers, reflect that giving reality. We are physical creatures who reflect his metaphysical generosity in our own physical world. Jesus, as the perfect image of God, gave Himself in complete generosity on the cross. And life, much more abundant, was given to him after that.
The entire arc of the Bible is a path back to Eden, but not the same Eden as before. This is an Eden with gifts that were given away and restored “much more,” with words magnified into blessing like Isaiah’s own prophecies. This is an Eden with tears, all wiped away by Jesus himself. This is an Eden with wounds, but wounds that are all healed, like the scars Christ’s resurrected body. The path back to Eden leads through the cross. This is what we were made for, and what we are promised.
(Image credit: Peaceable Kingdom Shrine Windows St. Peter the Fisherman Catholic Church Two Rivers Wisconsin https://www.liturgicalenvironments.com/Pages%20/Recent%20Commissions%203.html)
