The Hyperlinked Bible
Intertextuality Pair
Allusion
Later text
For behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create; for I will create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight.
Earlier text
Genesis 1:1BSB
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Isaiah 65:17 is Genesis 1:1's three-word core reissued: ברא (bara, "create"), שָׁמַיִם (shamayim, "heavens"), אֶרֶץ (erets, "earth"). ברא is the verb the Old Testament reserves for God — no human subject ever takes it — and Isaiah uses it three times in these two verses (once in v.17, twice in v.18), which makes the claim unmistakable rather than incidental. The one who spoke the first heavens and earth into being is announcing that He will do it again.
Two things Isaiah adds are what make this progression rather than repetition. The first is the clause Genesis could not contain: "the former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind." This is not the repair of the first creation but its surpassing — a new order in which the old one has no claim on the memory. The second is the content he names. Asked what the new creation consists of, Isaiah answers with two nouns of gladness: "I will create Jerusalem to be a joy (גִּילָה, gilah) and its people to be a delight (מָשׂוֹשׂ, masos)," and the imperative that governs both is "be glad and rejoice forever in what I create" (65:18). The stated purpose of the new creation is His people's joy.
The New Testament takes up both halves. "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!" (2 Corinthians 5:17) — the "former things" clause applied to a person now. And Revelation 21:1-5 quotes Isaiah directly for the consummation: "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth... And the One seated on the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new.'" Between them stands Christ, in whom "all things were created" and in whom "all things hold together," the firstborn from among the dead so that in everything He might have preeminence (Colossians 1:15-20). The Creator does not send an agent to fix the world; He enters it.
That is the whole arc in three texts, and it ends where Isaiah put it — not in a restored garden but in a rejoicing city, where the God who made everything makes it new for the gladness of the people who live in it.
▸ In the Beginning ▸ New Heavens and a New Earth