e spiritual territory, that ver. 6 is, in the
first instance, connected with vers. 4 and 5, in which the all-powerful
sway of Christ's justice on earth is described, of which the
consequences must, in the first instance, appear in the _human
territory_; and, farther, that the point from which the prophecy
started, is the raging of the wolf and bear of the world's power
against the poor defenceless flock of the Lord.

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._"

[Pg 123]

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,