Isaiah 65:20: Death in the New Earth?

This strange verse is found within one of the two Old Testament passages speaking of "the new heavens and the new earth," Isaiah 65:17-25. (The other passage is Is 66:22-24.) Both Peter (2 Pet 3:13) and John (Rev 21:1) must have had the first Isaiah passage in mind, for they borrowed its wording.

The problem comes when we examine Isaiah 65:20-25 in light of what John had to say in the Apocalypse about the new heavens and the new earth. In Isaiah 65:20 death is possible, but in Revelation 21:4 death is no longer a feature of that new estate. John assures us that God "will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

John depicts the new order of things in the new heavens and the new earth as conditions in which absolute perfection has been reached and where sin, death and sorrow are no more. Jesus mentioned that there would be no begetting of children at that time (Lk 20:36). Why then does Isaiah depict what appears to be the same period of time as one in which death, begetting of children (Is 65:23) and "sinners" are present? True, the power of death may be limited, but the very fact that it is at all present is the embarrassing issue in this text.

The only suggestion that seems to make sense treats Isaiah 65:20-25 as a distinct subparagraph within the topic of the new heavens and the new earth. Verses 17-19 may be paraphrased in this manner: "I will make new heavens and a new earth in which the former troubles will be forgotten, but Jerusalem will not be forgotten. Jerusalem will be completely free of any blemish. Sin may be forgotten, but God's people and the city of Jerusalem will not be forgotten."

Within this subparagraph form, the Jerusalem of Isaiah 65:17-19 pertains to the new Jerusalem of the new heavens and the new earth. The Jerusalem of Isaiah 65:20-25, however, is the Jerusalem of the millennial kingdom of Christ. Such an interpretation recognizes that the writers of Scripture often arranged their materials in a topical rather than a chronological order.

In the eternal state, when the new heavens and the new earth will have arrived, there will be no sin, sorrow and death. But when Christ reigns on earth, just prior to this eternal state, some of these burdens will remain, even if only in limited forms. So unexpected will death be that if people die after only living one hundred years, they will be regarded as having died as infants. Isaiah 65:20-25 breaks the chronological order expected in the chapter and interjects a related note about Jerusalem during the millennium.

Almost universally the early church believed Revelation 20:1-6 to represent a period of time, roughly corresponding to a thousand years, which would begin and conclude with two resurrections (the first of the righteous dead in Christ and the second of all the dead) and would be the time when, at the end of this period, Satan would be loosed for one last fling at opposing God before being finally and forever vanquished. It is to this same time period, then, that we would assign the strange collection of facts stated by Isaiah 65:20-25.

Since the millennium is part of the eternal state it introduces, "this age" could be expected to overlap with "the coming age." Thirty times the New Testament uses the dual expressions "this age" and "the coming age." "This age" is the current historical process. But with our Lord's casting out of the demons (Lk 11:20), and especially with the resurrection of Christ from the dead, "the powers of the coming age" (Heb 6:5) had already begun and overlapped this present age's historical process. Thus in the "now" believers were already experiencing some of the evidences and powers to be experienced in the "not yet" inbursting of Christ into history at his Second Coming.

In Isaiah 65:25 the prophet repeats the word from Isaiah 11:6-9. The description of that age to come again closes with a description of peace in the world of nature. In the new age the patriarchal measure of life will return, death will be the anomaly and then no more, and the hostility between man and undomesticated animals will be exchanged for peace.

Some may argue that the prophet could not have handled such a sharp distinction between the two periods in the age to come. I concede that the prophet may not yet have distinguished and separated these into two separate periods. In the foreshortening of horizons, which was so typical in prophecy, this indeed may have happened. But the resolution here mapped out would have been needed, since death could not have been abolished and continued to exist at one and the same time. That alone would have been enough to suggest that a subplot had developed within the main theme of God's new age to come.