“Leopards went extinct from the land of Israel in the twentieth century CE. It’ll be pretty darn wondrous for God to bring them back.”
Jerusalem, June 11 – The prophet whose vision of tranquility and harmony in the end of days includes evocative imagery of predators relaxing and cavorting in peace with their would-be prey clarified today that people have gotten the wrong idea about the wondrous nature of the scenario: the disappearance of predatory relationships, while notable, forms merely a side-story to the central message, which is the unfathomably unlikely prospect of those various animal species still existing during the Messianic Era, after centuries of human-driven habitat destruction, toxic waste dumping, and hunting, among other harmful practices.
Isaiah, son of Amotz, who lived in the eighth century Before the Common Era, foresaw an eventual reality devoid of exploitative relationships in society, carrying over to nature itself: “Wolf will dwell with lamb, and leopard will lie down with goat; calf, young lion, and yearling together, and a little child will lead them. Cow will feed with bear; their young will lie down together; lion will eat straw like fox. Infant will play near the asp’s den, and young child will put his hand into the viper’s nest…” (Chapter 11, verses 6-9).
Millennia of scholars and laypeople encountering that text long perceived with longing the depiction of a nonviolent future for humanity and animals alike – though some read the text as only using the animal imagery as metaphor for mankind’s current violent, predatory tendencies. Isaiah himself, however, stressed in an interview this week that he always felt that the principal source of amazement and wonder in his prophecy stems from the miraculous continued existence of wolves, leopards, and other threatened species that far in the future.
“Considering that leopards went extinct from the land of Israel in the twentieth century CE,” he remarked, “it’ll be pretty darn wondrous for God to bring them back.”
He made a parallel observation about wolves, lions, and bears, which ceased to have stomping grounds in the land many years ago.
“I’m actually surprised there are still goats, snakes, and even children still around,” Isaiah admitted. “The way humanity has been going, there’s been no guarantee any life on Earth would survive this long, except maybe some of the microorganisms at the deep sea vents.”
He acknowledged that since, as of this writing, the final redemption has yet to occur, time remains for any or all of the species mentioned in his prophecy to become extinct. “Humanity’s track record is pretty formidable on that score,” he noted.
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