In the Question Chair

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 4, 1901

In the Question Chair.

[Designed for the consideration of such questions as will be of interest and profit to the general reader. All correspondents should give their names and correct post-office address, that queries not replied to here may be answered by mail.]

801.—Dust the Serpent's Meat.

In Isa. 65:25 we read: “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat.” This is a description of things after redemption is complete. But was not eating dust by the serpent a part of the curse? Gen. 3:14. How, then, can the curse be perpetuated in the new earth?

G. W. R., Sioux Falls, S. D.

Answer.—Gen. 3:14 describes the condemnation and humiliation of the serpent, doomed to lie prone upon the ground,—“Upon thy belly shalt thou go,”—and, as a mark of humiliation, thrusting his nose continually into the dust: “And dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.” A man often says of his foes that have been overthrown, “My enemies were made to bite the dust.” Whereas, Isa. 66:25 speaks of the new nature the animals will have in the new conditions of life in the immortal state, where the lion “shall eat straw like the bullock,” and the dust shall be to the serpent not a badge of humility, but a means of sustenance.