20 “No longer will babies die when only a few days old.
    No longer will adults die before they have lived a full life.
No longer will people be considered old at one hundred!
    Only the cursed will die that young!
21 In those days people will live in the houses they build
    and eat the fruit of their own vineyards.
22 Unlike the past, invaders will not take their houses
    and confiscate their vineyards.
For my people will live as long as trees,
    and my chosen ones will have time to enjoy their hard-won gains.
23 They will not work in vain,
    and their children will not be doomed to misfortune.
For they are people blessed by the Lord,
    and their children, too, will be blessed.
24 I will answer them before they even call to me.
    While they are still talking about their needs,
    I will go ahead and answer their prayers!
25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together.
    The lion will eat hay like a cow.
    But the snakes will eat dust.
In those days no one will be hurt or destroyed on my holy mountain.
    I, the Lord, have spoken!” (New Living Translation).

‘The contours of that new world open up here in ever-widening circles: from the mountains, plains and valleys of a renewed Palestine (9-10) to the new heavens and a new earth (17) with a new Jerusalem at its centre (18) – a cosmic paradise, one vast sanctuary from which everything harmful has been banished for ever (25)…It is a whole new order of things in which all political structures are transcended. It will be so new that the past will be forgotten entirely (17). The promised land will no longer be Canaan or Israel but the whole earth…The chapter ends with an unmistakable allusion to the final undoing of the work of the serpent who brought sin and death into the world in the first place (25). The new world will be history perfected and paradise regained, and it will be full of the modest and simple delights that God always intended us to have: joy (18), fullness of life (20), security (21-23a), rewarding work (22b), fellowship with God (23b-24), and peace (25).’ Barry Webb: ‘Isaiah’, pp.244,245.

It’s important to point out that the description of the ”new heavens” and ”new earth” in Isaiah are not exactly the same as that given in Revelation 21. For example, here in Isaiah, death will be delayed but not abolished. In John’s vision there will be ”no more death” (Rev.21:4).

Derek Kidner makes the observation that the new is depicted wholly in terms of the old, only without the old sorrows. He says the point of a hundred years old (20) is that in this new setting a mere century is so short, so vast is the scale. ‘But all this is expressed freely, locally and pictorially, to kindle hope rather than feed curiosity.’ ‘New Bible Commentary’, p.669.

Isaiah’s language points to miraculously long life and multiplied blessing, but it awaits the final book of the Bible to complete the picture. We might say that Isaiah draws the lines, but Revelation colours them in.