Text: Isaiah 65:25
OT Text Referred to: Genesis 3:14
Subject: curse removed with the exception of the serpent
Source: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Contrast + Longitudinal Theme
Significance: Isaiah 65:25 envisions the new creation's peaceable kingdom — "The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox" — but pointedly adds "and dust (עָפָר, afar) will be the serpent's food." This directly echoes Genesis 3:14 where God cursed the serpent: "on your belly you will go, and dust (עָפָר, afar) you will eat all the days of your life." While the other animals are freed from predatory violence in the new creation, the serpent's curse remains — its sentence from Eden is not reversed. This deliberate exception signals that the curse on the serpent (the enemy behind the fall) is permanent, even as the curse on the rest of creation is lifted in the new heavens and new earth.
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Text: Genesis 3:14
OT Text Referred to: Isaiah 65:25
Subject: Curse Removed with the Exception of Upon the Serpent
Source: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Longitudinal Theme
Significance: Isaiah 65:25 deliberately echoes the serpent's curse from Genesis 3:14 by declaring that in the new creation, "the food of the serpent will be dust" (וְנָחָשׁ עָפָר לַחְמוֹ, venachash 'afar lachmo), recalling God's original sentence: "dust you will eat all the days of your life" (וְעָפָר תֹּאכַל, ve'afar to'khal). While every other creature in Isaiah's vision is transformed -- the wolf and lamb feeding together, the lion eating straw -- the serpent alone remains under its primordial curse, still consigned to the dust. This selective persistence of the curse signals that the new creation reverses the effects of the fall for all creation except the agent of evil itself. Isaiah's new heavens and new earth thus frame redemption not as universal amnesty but as the restoration of Edenic peace alongside the permanent subjugation of the serpent.