Talk:Isaiah 59-66 (Translated)
Proposal (sorta) for Isaiah 65:25
| “ | The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain,” says the LORD. | ” |
—Isaiah 65:25 | ||
Now, the part about serpents eating dust on the New Earth refers to Genesis 3:14, which says that the serpent will eat dust for all its life on the mortal "old" Earth. Now, in the discussion about Genesis 3:14, there's an agreement made that "dust" should be changed to "earth" for the proposed conservative translation, since the original Hebrew word "aphar" can translate to either "dust" or "earth." Now, from what I'm noticing between Isaiah 65:25 and Genesis 3:14, there's one translation which consistently uses "earth" instead of "dust" in both verses: the Brenton Septuagint Translation (one can click CTRL-F to search keywords within the two Biblehub articles to find it easier). Oddly enough, there may be a few translations which use "earth" only in Genesis and "dust" in Isaiah, such as the Douay–Rheims Bible.
At the moment, since there's no conservative translation for any of Isaiah 59–66, I'm not yet sure about the best way to word the particular specified verse as possibly the start on translating these chapters, only that I think 65:25 definitely should use "earth" instead of "dust" for consistency with the agreed conservative translation in Genesis 3:14. Just to clarify on the likely differential interpretations, the verse in Genesis must carry a greater symbolic meaning in in reference to Satan's punishment, while Isaiah 65:25 is apparently talking about literal serpents eating "dust"/"earth" on the New Earth in a direct sense.
I got other things to still do on Christmas Day today, and will try to arrive back here later, analyze all the different translations of Isaiah 65:25, and try to come up with the best, most concise proposal for the conservative translation. If anyone else comes up with a proposal before I do, I'm eager to see what they have in mind. —LT (Exodus 23:2) Sunday, 14:12, December 25, 2022 (EST)