its of men." He refers
every thing to the union, within the Christian Church, of those who, in
their natural condition, lived far separated from one another, and in
hostility the one to the other. _Jerome_ considers the opposite view as
even a species of heresy. He says: "The Jews and the Judaizers among
ourselves maintain that all this shall be fulfilled according to the
letter; that in the light of Christ who, they believe, shall come at
the end of the days, all beasts shall be reduced to tameness, so that
the wolf, giving up its former ferocity, shall dwell with the lamb,
&c." Upon the whole, he states the sense in the same manner as
_Theodoret_, from whom he sometimes differs in the allegorical
explanation of the details only. In a similar manner _Luther_ also
explains it, who, _e.g._, on ver. 6, "the wolf shall dwell with the
lambs, etc." remarks: "But these are allegories by which the Prophet
intimates that the tyrants, the self-righteous and powerful ones in the
world, shall be converted, and be received into the Church." _Calvin_
says: "By these images, the Prophet indicates that, among the people of
Christ there will be no disposition for injuring one another, nor any
ferocity or inhumanity." The circumstance that the use of animal
symbolism is widely spread throughout Scripture is in favour of this
interpretation. One may, _e.g._ compare Ps. xxii., where the enemies of
the righteous are represented under the image of dogs, lions, bulls,
and unicorns; [Pg 120] Jer. v. 6, where, by lion, wolf, and leopard,
the kingdoms of the world which are destructive to the people of God
are designated; the four beasts in Dan. vii.; but especially Is. xxxv.
9: "There (on the way of salvation which the Lord shall, in the future,
open up for His people) shall not be a lion, nor shall any ravenous
beast go up thereon,"--where the ravenous beasts are the
representatives of the world's power, hostile to the Kingdom of God.
Nevertheless, the literal interpretation, defended by several Jewish
expositors, maintains an undeniable preference. In favour of it are the
following arguments: 1. The circumstance that it is impossible to carry
through, in the details, the figurative interpretation; and it is by
this that our passage is distinguished from all the other passages in
which the wild, cruel, and destructive tendencies in the human sphere
appear under the images of their representatives in the animal world.
The supposition that "we h