Isaiah 65:20
“No longer will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days,
Or an old man who does not live out his days;
For the youth will die at the age of one hundred
And the one who does not reach the age of one hundred
Will be thought accursed.
This is sometimes thought to be referring to the Millenium reign of Christ. That is at least what Post-mil and Pre-mil proponents advocate. A sort of in-between period between the age and the age to come. The issue with those interpretations is that the text is about the “new heavens and new earth”. That comes after the millennial reign in any model. Looking at the preceding verses:
17 “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth;
And the former things will not be remembered or come to mind.
18 “But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create;
For behold, I create Jerusalem for rejoicing
And her people for gladness.
19 “I will also rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in My people;
And there will no longer be heard in her
The voice of weeping and the sound of crying.
The point in verse 20 is to contrast the things to come with the things of this present time. That is the audiences only source of reference but even that isn’t enough to explain the age to come. In the ancient world, you have no hospitals to take your baby when something goes wrong. That is tough enough on modern parents when something goes wrong and you are powerless to stop it. This would be a time in which the pains that make this world what it is are wiped away.
Throughout this passage Isaiah uses aspects of present life to create impressions of the life that is yet to come. It will be a life totally provided for (13), totally happy (19cd), totally secure (22– 23) and totally at peace (24– 25). Things we have no real capacity to understand can be expressed only through things we know and experience. So it is that in this present order of things death cuts life off before it has well begun or before it has fully matured. But it will not be so then. No infant will fail to enjoy life nor an elderly person come short of total fulfilment. Indeed, one would be but a youth were one to die aged a hundred! This does not imply that death will still be present (contradicting 25: 7– 8) but rather affirms that over the whole of life, as we should now say from infancy to old age, the power of death will be destroyed. He who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed is a possible translation, save that it softens the literal ‘will be accursed’. ‘But the sinner, a hundred years old, will be accursed’ is a more likely rendering (see the RV and RSV), not least because it matches and prepares for the reference to the serpent in verse 25c and also because it provides negative strengthening for the assertion of the Lord’s total delight in the new city (19ab). Of course, there will be no sinners in the new Jerusalem (6– 7, 12, 15c). Once more metaphor is being used, but the reality is that even if, per impossible, a sinner were to escape detection for a century the curse would still search him out and destroy him. Thus verse 20 expresses a double thought: death will have no more power and sin no more presence.
Motyer, J. Alec. The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction & Commentary (Kindle Locations 15069-15081). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.
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