Hosea 2:18

“And in that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, and with the birds of the heavens, and with the creeping things of the ground, and I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the land, and will make them to lie down safely.”

We can contrast here Leviticus 26:21 ff.. ‘If you walk contrary to Me ---I will also send wild beasts among you, --- I will bring a sword upon you --- and I will make your cities waste and bring your sanctuaries into desolation,' and Deuteronomy 28:15 ff, ‘if you will not listen to the voice of YHWH your God --- YHWH shall cause you to be smitten before your enemies --- and your carcase shall be meat to all the birds of the air, and to the beast of the earth, --- your vineyards -- the worms will eat them ---all your trees and fruit of your land will the locusts consume.' In those verses curses were invoked on Israel if they failed to respond to YHWH and His covenant. And Hosea has already warned that those curses would now be fulfilled. But ‘in that day', the day of God's future action, those very curses will be reversed, for God will bind the wild creatures, beasts, birds and ‘creeping things' by a covenant to prevent their harming the land in any way, and will break the weapons of their enemies and remove warfare from the land so that His renewed people can lie down in safety knowing that they are fully secure. In other words He will put a stop to anything that could cause them harm. Compare Acts 10:12 where the indication is that through the death of Christ beasts, birds and creeping things have been rendered ‘clean' and therefore harmless.

Again at certain times this found literal fulfilment during the inter-Testamental period when, with full possession of their land, these dangers were removed from Israel, the beasts no longer roamed, and the sword no longer struck. And it was to be true of the followers of our Lord Jesus Christ, the true remnant of Israel, for He Himself said, ‘behold I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will by any means hurt you' (Luke 10:19), with the result that they too travelled safely in the land, and in many lands, establishing the true remnant of Israel. In Acts 10:12 the beasts, birds and creeping things are symbolical of the Gentiles to whom God was about to offer His covenant so that they could become members of the true Israel. The Gentile ‘beasts' were no longer to be seen as unclean, and therefore as harmful to God's people, but were to be brought within the covenant. In Revelation also the power of the Wild Beast who assailed God's people will be broken (Revelation 19:20) so that they can no longer be harmed. In the new Heaven and the new earth, which is its final fulfilment, all such beasts and creeping things will have been rendered harmless (Isaiah 65:25). Compare Isaiah 11:1 where it will be as a result of the coming of the righteous king. There too there will be war no more (Isaiah 2:4). The promise therefore has a continuing and growing fulfilment, culminating in the new Heaven and the new earth.

(Of course the Old Testament prophets always saw the fulfilment of God's promises as coming ‘on earth' because at that stage there was no conception of Heaven as a place to which men could go (such a concept as Heaven would all too easily have become entangled in men's minds with idolatry and the home of the gods. It would have destroyed the uniqueness of Israel's concepts). It was later revelation that brought home the fact of a new Heaven and a new earth, so that fulfilment would be found on a new earth. Compare Hebrews 11:10 where this is made clear. The promises to Abraham of ‘the land' were to be fulfilled in a new Heaven and a new earth ‘above').