Bible Strands
Isaiah 7:21
On that day a man will raise a young cow and two sheep,
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Isaiah delivers this oracle to King Ahaz and the remnant of Judah during the Syro-Ephraimite crisis, positioned between the warning of Assyrian invasion in Isaiah 7:20 and the description of widespread dairy subsistence in Isaiah 7:22. The moment marks a prophetic pivot from national political failure to forced agrarian survival.
The words — The verse centers on `יְחַיֶּה־` (ye.chai.yeh), literally "he will preserve alive," and `עֶגְלַת־ בָּקָר` ('eg.Lat ba.Kar), meaning "a heifer of the herd." These terms specify the exact livestock a surviving landowner will maintain to sustain himself.
The thread — This pattern of displaced people tending flocks in ruined territory appears in Isaiah 5:17 and Isaiah 17:2, while Jeremiah 39:10 records a historical parallel where the propertyless poor are left to farm the devastated land. The immediate context in Isaiah 7:20–22 frames the verse as part of a nationwide economic contraction.
Why it lands — The text demands acknowledgment that divine judgment reduces complex societies to bare survival, removing economic security and social stratification. It requires the reader to accept that continued life depends entirely on God’s sovereign permission of scarcity.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And it shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a young cow, and two sheep;
Cross-references
- Isaiah 5:17 Lambs will graze as in their own pastures, and strangers will feed in the ruins of the wealthy.
- Jeremiah 39:10 But Nebuzaradan left behind in the land of Judah some of the poor people who had no property, and at that time he gave them vineyards and fields.
- Isaiah 17:2 The cities of Aroer are forsaken; they will be left to the flocks, which will lie down with no one to fear.
- Isaiah 37:30 And this will be a sign to you, O Hezekiah: This year you will eat what grows on its own, and in the second year what springs from the same. But in the third year you will sow and reap; you will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
- Isaiah 7:25 For fear of the briers and thorns, you will no longer traverse the hills once tilled by the hoe; they will become places for oxen to graze and sheep to trample.