Perhaps I'm not seeing the distinction but if the verse is hyperbolized, then wouldn't that make what's being said exaggerated/altered beyond what the words say? And if so, isn't that the same as being "untrue"?
Are you familiar with any literary devices? There are more than two dozen of them. Alliteration, allusion, allegory, analogy, irony, paradox, hyperbole, metaphor, simile are some of the most commonly used ones. Are you familiar with them. Are you aware one of the things that makes the Bible unique is its use of all the literary devices before they were common occurrences in human literature? Do you know the definition of hyperbole? Hyperbole is,
by definition,
an exaggerated statement not meant to be taken literally. That is how and why hyperbole is not a lie. A lie is the knowing or intentional misrepresentation of fact for the purpose of deceit.
Note I did not claim Isaiah 65:17 was hyperbole, I simply asked if
@fastfredy0 considered it to have been said with a degree of hyperbole.
The phrase "heaven and earth" is imagery used in various ways throughout the Bible. Logically speaking, God cannot literally mean he is replacing creation with an alternative, new creation in the physical sense because that would require God to take all the plants and animals on the planet and put them some place during the interim of replacement. Notice the language of Isaiah 65:17 and its tenses. God AM creating new heavens and earth. The verse does not say He
will create new heavens and earth some yet unidentified time in the future. He
am doing it right then and there at the time He spoke to Isaiah and Isaiah spoke to a rebellious covenant-breaking Jewish people. The conjugation is present tense ongoing, not fixed future. Notice also that this creating a new heavens and earth in Isaiah 65 is couched in a time when God will "
bring forth offspring from Jacob, and an heir of My mountains from Judah." That would be during the period of time during the incarnation, not the second coming. That was when the offspring of Jacob (Jesus) was brought forth. The passage is messianic, not apocalyptic. Isaiah 65 17's new heavens and earth occur when Jerusalem is created for rejoicing and God also rejoices in it (vss 18-19 ).
What does the NT have to say about the new Jerusalem? The NT has two avenues of commentary. The first is that the redeemed have already come to the new Jerusalem, the city of peace (jeru = city; salem = peace) built by God.
Hebrews 12:22-23
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all....
According to the author of Hebrews Isaiah 65:17 has happened! But we all also know and believe there is still a future coming. Unless a person is a full-preterist we all look forward to the day when...
Revelation 21:1
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.
In between Hebrews and Revelation we have this...
2 Peter. 3:10
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be discovered.
And, sadly, there is no end of the ways that verse gets abused because, for example, many Christians think there is only one single, specific "
day of the LORD/Lord," when scripture uses that phrase to describes several different events (all of which have a
two common themes, not one: redemption and judgment).
More to the point of
hyperbole, it is that phrase, "
the elements will be destroyed," that causes confusion and error because if the verse is taken literally then it means everything is literally destroyed literally at an atomic level. If that happens then ALL life ceases to exist. That nonsensical literal interpretation means all life is destroyed when God is in the business of making alive those previously dead in sin. If the heavens
and the earth is literally destroyed at the elemental level then neither the heavens or the earth exist and neither do any of the creatures existing therein. You,
@Two-Edged Sword, will cease to exist if the verse is read literally. The same goes for me and
@fastfredy0. We cease to exist because our elements are destroyed. We're not born a new from above - we are destroyed at an elemental level, the atoms of our constitution undone and we're made anew in entirety. That's not consistent with the whole of scripture.
Here' a more obvious example of figurative language that cannot logically be taken literally.
Revelation 12:4a
And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and hurled them to the earth.
Most Christians do not take that sentence literally, but I have crossed paths with a few who do. I hope you're not one of them because if a literal third of the literal stars were literally to "fall" from heaven and literally fall to earth then the earth would literally be destroyed. The closest star to earth is Proxima Centauri. It's about 4.24 light years from earth. That means
if that star were to start "falling" toward earth at the speed of light it would take four years to impact this planet. We'd see it coming long before it got here. If it literally crashed into this planet moving at the speed of light, then the earth would be smashed into sub-atomic particles faster than we could measure the event, and no life on the planet would or could possibly survive. Not only would that be the case, but Alpha Centauri, the second closest star would have no earth to fall to. Neither would the rest of the third of the stars. The first star to literally fall to earth would make earth non-existent. Furthermore, just one star leaving its gravitational point in the cosmos would change the movement of all the other stars. A third of the stars would be more than 60
billion stars! If 60 billion stars left their orbits, then radical changes would occur with all the other heavenly orbs. The entire heavens would be changed, if not also destroyed.
Revelation 12:4 (in its entirety)
His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born.
If just one star left its place in the heavens and fell to earth, then Satan would have nothing to stand on and the woman giving birth (assuming she survived the cataclysm) would be birthing a child into nothing - no earth on which to live.
So Revelation 12:4 falling stars is a figure of speech, a hyperbolic one. God is exaggerating the imagery in order to make a point, and He does not intend His readers to take the sentence literally. He is not lying. Something cataclysmic did/will happen but it is not a literal star literally falling to earth and literally crashing into it.
