Later text
‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,’ and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.”
Intertextuality Pair
Allusion
Later text
‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,’ and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.”
Earlier text
Isaiah 25:8BSB
He will swallow up death forever. The Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from every face and remove the disgrace of His people from the whole earth. For the LORD has spoken.
Isaiah 25:8 contains one of the most profound promises in the OT: "He will swallow up death forever. The Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from every face." Revelation 21:4 directly fulfills both halves: "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes" and "there will be no more death." The verbal correspondence is close — the wiping away of tears (Greek exaleipsei, Hebrew machah) from faces/eyes, and the abolition of death. Paul also cites Isaiah 25:8 in 1 Corinthians 15:54 in connection with bodily resurrection, showing apostolic consensus that this promise awaits eschatological fulfillment. The context of Isaiah 25 is YHWH's eschatological feast on Mount Zion for "all the peoples" (25:6), which corresponds to the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev 19:9). This is arguably the single most important OT text behind Revelation 21:4.