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Echoes of Revelation
Revelation never quotes the Old Testament outright, yet no New Testament book refers to it more. See both texts side by side, why they don’t match, and what John does with them.
Revelation 21:5, I am making all things new
God's announcement from the throne takes up Isaiah 43:19, behold I make new things, and adds all.
Revelation 21:5, in every translation this tool compares.
A builder who once promised a new kitchen can stand in the finished house and say every room is new. In Isaiah 43 God told the exiles to look, because he was doing a new thing, a road in the desert. In John the one on the throne speaks again. Look, he says, I am making all things new. One small word, all, turns Isaiah's new thing into a whole new world.
The opening look, the speaker God, the word new, and the verb make in the present tense. The Greek of Isaiah 43:19 has idou ego poio kaina, behold I make new things. John has idou kaina poio panta.
John adds panta, all. Beale says the addition marks full fulfillment, the end of what was begun, and not that everyone is saved. Isaiah's new thing was a way home from Babylon through the wilderness. John's is the whole new creation. Beale also hears Isaiah 66:22, the new heaven and earth that I make.
Beale notes that God speaks in his own voice only twice in Revelation, here and in 1:8. The present tense, I am making, is a prophetic present: it makes the future certain. Paul uses the same Isaiah promise in 2 Corinthians 5:17 for the new creation that has already begun in Christ.
Not Isaiah's line repeated exactly. Isaiah 43:19 has new things; John has all things made new, spoken by God from the throne.
Isaiah 43:19 in Greek reads idou ego poio kaina ha nyn anatelei, behold I make new things which will now spring up. Revelation 21:5 reads idou kaina poio panta. Beale notes that the Isaiah texts behind 21:1, 4-5 all use present poio as a prophetic present (43:19; 65:17-18; 66:22 in Greek). He lists 21:4-5 among the clear allusions to Isaiah. The next line, these words are faithful and true, Beale roots in Isaiah 65:16, where God is the God of amen; Aquila and Symmachus render that word as faithfulness and amen. He adds that Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer 51 applied Isaiah 43:19 to the renewal of the future temple. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible says the verse alludes to Isaiah 43:19; the CSB Study Bible links it to 2 Corinthians 5:17.
Beale reads I am making as a future made certain. Mulholland, as Beale reports, reads it as renewal happening within history now. The CSB Study Bible holds both: believers are already a new creation, and everything will be made new later. Keener points to Wisdom of Solomon 7:27, where Wisdom renews all things in the present.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 21:5 and 21:11
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 21:5
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 21:5
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 21:5-8
- Septuagint, Isaiah 43:19 and 66:22, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 21:5
