I decided that I wanted to write a song about the Bible verse, “the lion will lie down with the lamb.” It turns out that this is one of those things everyone thinks is in the Bible but its not. The closest thing to this is in the eleventh chapter of the book of Isaiah. In verse 6 it says,
“The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.”
I didn’t let this discourage me from going ahead and writing a song about this passage of prophesy about a coming Messiah. I wanted to stick with the original groupings of animals in the verses. I decided that whenever I performed this song, I would emphasize the fact that this is different from what everyone thinks is in the Bible. I think it helps people pay more attention to what the scripture and ultimately what the song has to say.
You will notice that the verses don’t rhyme. If you compare the first verse of the song to the first three verses of Isaiah 11, you will see that I didn’t change very many words. I thought that the words were poetic enough without trying to force rhymes. Here is the passage from the scripture:
“A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him–
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord–
and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.”
Compare this to the lyrics of the song:
“A shoot will come up
From the stump of Jesse;
From his roots a Branch that will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the LORD will rest upon him
Of wisdom and understanding,
Of counsel and power,
And the knowledge and the fear of the LORD”
This scripture is often used during the second Sunday of Advent. I regularly sing this song at my church on this Sunday and I often include this as one of my Christmas related songs.