Tag: Peter Leithart

Introduction

What are the “heavens and earth” that the New Testament describes as growing old, being shaken, passing away, or being replaced by the new heavens and new earth? Are they the heavens and earth of Genesis 1:1, as Tim Martin’s Covenant Creationism requires, or are they the Old Covenant Mosaic heavens and earth established through the Exodus and at Sinai, as described in Isaiah 51:15–16? That is one of the central exegetical questions of this article. The answer has enormous consequences not only for Covenant Creationism, but also for how Full Preterists should understand the de-creation language of the New Testament.

Tim Martin’s Covenant Creation (CC) view has been indirectly challenged by our ongoing studies in Revelation and, more specifically, by my examination of Isaiah 51:9–16 in connection with the Targum, John Owen, The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, and other Jewish and Christian interpreters. These sources provide important support for identifying the “heavens and earth” of Isaiah 51:15–16 with Israel’s covenantal formation through the first Exodus and at Sinai. The context itself takes us back to “the days of old,” the defeat of Rahab, the drying of the sea, and the redeemed passing through it (Isa. 51:9–10). God then speaks of placing His words in the mouth of His people, covering them with His hand, planting the heavens, founding the earth, and declaring to Zion, “You are My people” (vv. 15–16).

What makes this particularly significant is that Martin himself once interpreted Isaiah 51 essentially as I do. In Beyond Creation Science, Martin and Jeff Vaughn wrote that Isaiah “uses prophetic poetry to recount the crossing of the Red Sea as Israel left Egypt,” that “God placed his words in Israel’s mouth at Sinai with the giving of the Law,” and that “Israel became God’s new creation at the time of the Exodus.” Martin has since abandoned that interpretation of Isaiah 51:15–16 and now appeals especially to the Septuagint as justification for moving this creation forward. I will address that argument carefully because it deserves an exegetical answer. Nevertheless, I do not believe the LXX requires Martin’s revised interpretation, nor do I believe it adequately explains why his former Exodus-Sinai interpretation had to be abandoned.

In my judgment, the deeper problem is that Martin’s former interpretation creates a serious difficulty for what his present system needs Genesis 1 and Isaiah 51 to accomplish. Covenant Creationism needs the Old Covenant heavens and earth to begin in Genesis 1. Those Genesis heavens and earth must then become the covenantal cosmos that supposedly grows old, is shaken, and passes away in the New Testament de-creation texts. But if Isaiah 51:15–16 describes the establishment of Mosaic Israel as a covenantal heavens and earth through the Exodus and at Sinai, then Scripture has already identified an Old Covenant heavens and earth at the very historical point where the Mosaic covenant itself was established. There is no exegetical necessity to reach backward to Genesis 1:1 and turn its heavens and earth into the Mosaic covenantal world.

The competing interpretations can therefore be stated simply. Covenant Creationism requires the basic movement to be Genesis 1 creation of the covenantal heavens and earth → Old Covenant world → de-creation and passing away → New Covenant heavens and earth. The position defended in this article is Exodus-Sinai / Isaiah 51:15–16 creation of the Mosaic covenantal heavens and earth → Old Covenant world → de-creation and passing away of that Mosaic world → New Covenant heavens and earth.

An important distinction must be made here. I am not arguing that the New Testament writers never draw imagery, vocabulary, or creation patterns from Genesis 1–2. They obviously can. But an allusion to Genesis does not by itself establish Genesis 1:1 as the covenantal referent undergoing judgment and de-creation. A prophet can employ imagery drawn from the original creation to describe the creation, judgment, or de-creation of a later covenantal order. Therefore, the question is not merely, Where did the imagery originate? The more important question is, To what historical-covenantal order is that imagery being applied? Isaiah 51:15–16 is crucial precisely because it applies heavens-and-earth creation language to Israel’s Exodus-Sinai covenantal formation.

This becomes even more significant because Martin continues to recognize Exodus 19–24 as the historical setting of God’s covenantal marriage to Israel. Thus, Martin once recognized the creation of Israel’s covenantal heavens and earth at Exodus-Sinai and continues to recognize Israel’s marriage to God at Exodus-Sinai. These realities should not be separated simply because his present system requires the creation to be moved elsewhere. They are complementary biblical descriptions of the same covenant-constituting event. God redeemed Israel from Egypt, brought her to Himself, gave her His covenant words, entered into covenant with her, and declared her to be His people. Jeremiah describes this Exodus covenant as a marriage in which God was Israel’s “husband” (Jer. 31:32), while Isaiah 51 describes this same Exodus-Sinai complex in creation language: God placed His words in Israel’s mouth, planted the heavens, founded the earth, and declared, “You are My people.”

The argument can therefore be stated very simply. If the Mosaic covenant was established at Sinai, and Isaiah describes Israel’s constitution in connection with that Exodus-Sinai event as the planting of “the heavens” and founding of “the earth,” then the Mosaic covenant possessed its own covenantal heavens and earth. When the New Testament announces the termination of the Mosaic covenantal age, therefore, the most immediate covenantal heavens and earth available to pass away are those established with that covenant—not the heavens and earth originating in Genesis 1:1.

This produces a remarkably coherent covenantal pattern: the Mosaic marriage corresponds to the creation of the Mosaic heavens and earth; covenant judgment and divorce correspond to the passing away of those heavens and earth; and the New Covenant marriage corresponds to the new heavens and new earth. Revelation 21 brings these themes together explicitly. John sees “the first heaven and the first earth” pass away and immediately sees the New Jerusalem “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21:1–2). Creation and marriage belong together at the beginning of the Mosaic covenantal world, and creation and marriage belong together when that world gives way to the New Covenant creation.

This produces a remarkably coherent covenantal pattern that may be stated in the form of a simple syllogism:

Major premise:  The Mosaic covenant is constituted at the Exodus–Sinai complex (Exodus 19–24) simultaneously as (a) God’s marriage to Israel (Jeremiah 31:32: “I was their husband”) and (b) the planting of the heavens and founding of the earth (Isaiah 51:9–16: Red Sea deliverance → words placed in Israel’s mouth → “You are My people”; cf. Deuteronomy 32:6 LXX, where God “made” and “created” Israel).

Minor premise:  That same Mosaic covenant is terminated in AD 70 by judicial divorce and the passing away of the covenantal order it created (Revelation 17–21: the harlot city judged; “the first heaven and the first earth had passed away”; the New Jerusalem appears “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband”).

Conclusion:  Therefore marriage/salvation = creation of the (Mosaic) heavens and earth, and divorce/judgment = de-creation of those same heavens and earth. The New-Covenant counterpart follows the identical pattern: the new marriage (Bride of the Lamb) coincides with the new heavens and new earth (Revelation 21:1–2).

There was no marriage in the creation of the physical universe in Genesis 1:1. God simply created the heavens and the earth; He did not enter into covenant marriage with anyone. Yet Revelation 21:1–2 deliberately joins the passing away of “the first heaven and the first earth” with the immediate appearance of the New Jerusalem “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” The de-creation and the new marriage stand side by side. That pairing is impossible if the “first heaven and first earth” are the physical cosmos of Genesis 1:1, because Genesis 1 contains no marriage motif at all.

The only heavens and earth that Scripture itself creates in the context of marriage is the Mosaic covenantal order established at Sinai. Therefore the “first heaven and the first earth” that pass away in Revelation 21:1–2 cannot be the physical creation of Genesis 1:1. They are the covenantal heavens and earth “created” at Sinai—the order that began with marriage and ended with divorce. The symmetry is exact: marriage and creation belong together at the beginning of the Mosaic world; divorce and de-creation belong together at its end. Revelation 21 simply brings these themes together explicitly.

For this reason, Isaiah 51:9–16 is not some peripheral disagreement over an obscure prophetic metaphor. It is, in my judgment, an Achilles’ heel of Covenant Creationism. If Isaiah 51:15–16 gives us the establishment of the Mosaic heavens and earth at Exodus-Sinai, then those heavens and earth—not Genesis 1:1—become the obvious covenantal candidate for the heavens and earth that later grow old, are shaken, and pass away. Martin claims that his change of interpretation was motivated by the LXX of Isaiah 51:16. I do not believe that is the fundamental reason his system requires this change, but we will deal with the LXX argument nonetheless and show that it does not require abandoning the Exodus-Sinai interpretation Martin himself formerly held.

Physical Type, Spiritual Fulfillment, and Two Opposite Errors

There is a broader hermeneutical issue underneath this disagreement. Martin himself has acknowledged that “Genesis 1–3 is typological,” and on that point we can agree. But something can be genuinely physical and historical while simultaneously functioning typologically. Indeed, this is one of the most basic patterns of biblical revelation. Redemptive history repeatedly moves from physical and historical types and shadows toward their greater spiritual realities fulfilled “in Christ.” The physical reality of the type does not have to be denied in order to affirm the spiritual reality of the antitype.

This is precisely where I believe Dispensational futurism and Covenant Creationism make opposite hermeneutical errors. Dispensationalism frequently refuses to allow the physical Old Covenant type to give way fully to its superior spiritual New Covenant fulfillment. Physical land promises must ultimately terminate again in physical land; earthly Jerusalem must again become the prophetic center; a physical temple must be rebuilt; animal sacrifices must return; and national Israel must again occupy a distinctive covenantal position. The movement effectively becomes physical Old Covenant type → restored physical Old Covenant form.

But the New Testament consistently moves in the opposite direction—from shadow to substance, from type to antitype, from earthly copies to heavenly realities, and from Old Covenant forms to their superior fulfillment in Christ. The physical temple was real, but it pointed beyond itself to Christ and His people. The Levitical priesthood consisted of real historical priests, but it anticipated Christ’s superior priesthood. The sacrifices involved actual animals and blood, but they were shadows pointing to Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice. The land was genuinely geographical, yet its theological significance expands in the New Covenant. Earthly Jerusalem was an actual city, yet the apostolic movement is toward the Jerusalem above and ultimately the New Jerusalem. In none of these examples does spiritual fulfillment require us to deny the historical or physical reality of the type.

Covenant Creationism risks making the opposite error. Because later biblical writers employ creation imagery spiritually and covenantally, CC reasons backward and concludes that the original creation itself must have been spiritual and covenantal rather than physical. But that conclusion does not follow. The later spiritual or covenantal use of an earlier physical reality does not erase the physical reality from which the imagery was drawn. No one concludes that the Old Covenant temple was never physical because the New Testament applies temple language to Christ and the Church. We do not conclude that Canaan was never physical because its typology reaches a greater inheritance in Christ. Nor do we conclude that earthly Jerusalem never existed because the New Testament speaks of the Jerusalem above and the New Jerusalem. Why, then, should later covenantal uses of creation imagery prove that the original creation was never physical?

The normal movement of biblical typology is much more coherent: physical/historical reality → type and shadow → spiritual/covenantal fulfillment in Christ. The antitype does not erase the historicity of the type; it fulfills and transcends it. This allows an original physical creation to supply the vocabulary, imagery, and theological patterns that later inspired writers employ to describe covenantal creation, judgment, de-creation, and restoration without requiring us to collapse all creation language into one covenantal meaning.

Isaiah 51:15–16 is an excellent example. God obviously did not manufacture another physical planet at Sinai. Rather, Isaiah takes creation language and applies it covenantally to the formation of Israel. Through the Exodus and Sinai God constituted a people, placed His words in their mouth, entered into covenant and marriage with them, and “planted the heavens” and “founded the earth.” The existence of this Mosaic covenantal creation does not require the original creation itself to have been Mosaic or merely covenantal. The earlier creation provides the imagery that can subsequently be applied to the creation of Israel’s covenant world.

Thus, we need to avoid both hermeneutical extremes. Dispensationalism moves backward from Old Covenant physical types toward restored physical Old Covenant forms, while Covenant Creationism moves backward from later covenantal creation imagery and makes the original creation itself covenantal. The biblical movement is progressive and Christological: historical and physical realities supply types and patterns that develop through redemptive history and reach their superior spiritual fulfillment in Christ and His New Covenant people. The promises of God ultimately find their “Yes” and “Amen” in Him (2 Cor. 1:20).

A Growing Problem for Covenant Creationism: Where Is Physical Creation?

This raises another serious problem for Covenant Creationism as the system has evolved. Where, within its present hermeneutic, does the Bible actually teach that God created the physical universe? Martin and Vaughn once wrote:

“And we do not deny that there are quite a few statements in the Bible that God made everything that is visible, the heavens and earthed seas and all they contain.” (Beyond Creation Science, 359).

Notice what is missing: no biblical passages are supplied. At the time, Martin and Vaughn apparently assumed with the rest of us that Scripture contains passages teaching that God created the visible, physical creation. Their statement could hardly be clearer. They affirmed that God made “everything that is visible, the heavens and earth, seas and all they contain.” Apparently they did not then believe that recognizing covenantal creation language required denying that Scripture elsewhere teaches physical creation.

But Covenant Creationism has continued to evolve. Its advocates now deny that the creation material in Job describes God’s physical creation, and the same hermeneutical trajectory appears to extend to creation language elsewhere. Consequently, the absence of biblical references accompanying Martin and Vaughn’s earlier assertion has become much more significant. Where are the “quite a few statements” they claimed teach that God made everything visible? Which passages, according to their present hermeneutic, actually teach that God created the physical universe?

This cannot be answered merely by saying, “We believe God created the physical universe.” A verbal affirmation is not an exegesis. If Covenant Creationists affirm physical creation as a biblical doctrine, then they must identify the biblical texts from which that doctrine is derived and demonstrate that those texts actually teach physical creation according to their present hermeneutic. If the passages they once assumed taught physical creation have progressively been reinterpreted as covenantal creation, then merely retaining the old doctrinal conclusion does not solve the problem. You cannot reject the biblical premises and continue claiming the biblical conclusion.

Jeff Vaughn and other Covenant Creationists have responded to this criticism by comparing it to the doctrines of the Trinity and the fulfillment of prophecy in AD 70. They argue that the word “Trinity” does not appear in Scripture and that there is no verse simply stating, “The Second Coming occurred in AD 70.” But this is a false parallel and a category mistake. The question is not whether later theological terminology or historical dating appears verbatim in Scripture. The question is whether the biblical propositions from which those conclusions are derived actually exist.

I can produce Old and New Testament passages establishing the biblical propositions from which the doctrine of the Trinity is derived. Likewise, I can produce passages establishing the nature, timing, and historical circumstances of the first-century fulfillment I identify historically with AD 70. The terms Trinity and AD 70 may function as theological and historical shorthand, but their biblical foundations can be demonstrated exegetically.

I am simply applying the same standard to Covenant Creationism: Show us the texts.

I am not asking for a verse containing the modern expression “physical universe.” I am asking Covenant Creationists to identify the passages from which they derive the doctrine that God created the physical universe and demonstrate that those passages actually teach it according to their present hermeneutic. Martin and Vaughn themselves claimed there were “quite a few statements in the Bible” teaching that God made “everything that is visible.” Very well. What are they? And do they still interpret those passages as referring to the creation of the visible physical world?

This places Covenant Creationism in a dilemma of its own making. If Covenant Creationists can produce passages that actually teach physical creation, then they must acknowledge that biblical creation language can refer to physical creation and cannot automatically be reduced to covenant creation. But if every proposed passage is ultimately reinterpreted as covenant creation, then their system has removed the exegetical foundation for the very doctrine Martin and Vaughn once claimed to affirm. They would be retaining a conclusion inherited from historic Christian theology while denying the biblical premises necessary to establish it.

I am therefore willing to state the theological consequence plainly: if Covenant Creationism has no biblical texts that actually teach that God created the physical universe, then Covenant Creationism, consistently applied, has no exegetical basis for the biblical Creator-creature distinction and therefore functionally denies that distinction at the level of its hermeneutic. Its proponents may continue verbally to affirm the distinction, but that does not answer the exegetical problem. If their evolving hermeneutic has removed the physical-creation meaning from every passage that could establish the doctrine, they cannot simply import the conclusion back into their theology and insist that nothing has changed.

Martin and Vaughn’s earlier statement therefore comes back with considerable force against the development of their own system. They claimed there were “quite a few statements in the Bible” teaching that God made “everything that is visible.” Then show us those statements. If those texts still teach physical creation, acknowledge it and exegete them accordingly. If they no longer teach physical creation under the evolved Covenant Creation hermeneutic, then explain where the doctrine now comes from. Covenant Creationists cannot have this both ways.

Full Preterism Does Not Require Covenant Creationism

None of this requires me to pretend that I have solved every interpretive difficulty in Genesis 1–3. I have offered various possibilities over the years and remain open to different interpretations concerning the genre, structure, chronology, and typological dimensions of those chapters. A strictly wooden literal reading leaves me with questions, while the Covenant Creation interpretation produces what I regard as even more serious exegetical and theological difficulties. This is where I have stood for years and where I remain today.

Before proceeding, therefore, let me be perfectly clear: Full Preterism does not require or logically lead to Tim Martin’s Covenant Creationism, despite claims to the contrary. One can affirm that the New Testament’s eschatological prophecies were fulfilled in the first century without concluding that Genesis 1–3 must therefore describe the creation of the Old Covenant world. The fulfillment of New Testament eschatology and the interpretation of Genesis 1–3 are distinct exegetical questions and must be established from their respective contexts.

Nor is interpreting Genesis 1–3 remotely as straightforward as interpreting the eschatological framework of Revelation. Revelation explicitly identifies itself as symbolic/apocalyptic revelation communicated through “signs” and repeatedly supplies temporal indicators concerning the nearness of its fulfillment. Genesis 1–3 presents a different set of literary and exegetical questions. The long history of disagreement concerning these chapters among Jewish and Christian interpreters should itself produce considerably more humility than claims that Covenant Creationism has finally supplied the only “consistent” preterist interpretation.

This distinction also explains why the proposed debate between Martin and myself ultimately did not proceed. When Martin came to my Facebook page and challenged me to debate, I made clear that I was not willing to debate the entirety of Genesis 1–3 because I continue to study those chapters and do not presently hold a position on every issue with sufficient conviction to debate it. I did, however, agree to debate the much narrower proposition concerning Isaiah 51:15–16 and its relationship to Exodus 19–24. A proposition was drawn up and agreed upon. Martin nevertheless decided that he was going to debate Genesis 1–3 issues with me because I had appealed to John Owen on Isaiah 51:15–16. At that point I no longer regarded the proposed exchange as a focused or productive debate and withdrew from it. Whatever one thinks about that exchange, the exegetical question remains and can be examined here directly from the texts themselves.

The purpose of this article, therefore, is considerably narrower than solving every question surrounding Genesis 1–3. Which Old Covenant “heavens and earth” are the focus of the New Testament de-creation texts? Are they the heavens and earth of Genesis 1:1, as Covenant Creationism requires, or are they the Mosaic covenantal heavens and earth planted and founded through the Exodus and at Sinai in Isaiah 51:15–16?

My argument is that Isaiah supplies the answer. God redeemed Israel from Egypt, brought her through the sea, gave her His covenant words, entered into covenant and marriage with her at Sinai, and declared, “You are My people.” Isaiah describes this covenantal constitution as the planting of the heavens and founding of the earth. Martin himself once recognized substantially this very point.

If that interpretation is correct, the biblical progression is not Genesis 1 = creation of the Old Covenant world → New Testament de-creation of Genesis → New Covenant creation. Rather, it is physical creation → creation imagery applied to the Mosaic covenantal heavens and earth at Exodus-Sinai → covenant judgment, divorce, and de-creation of that Mosaic world → superior spiritual New Covenant creation and marriage in Christ and the New Jerusalem.

This preserves distinctions that both Covenant Creationism and Dispensational futurism blur in opposite directions. Covenant Creationism moves backward from later covenantal uses of creation language and makes the original creation itself covenantal; Dispensationalism moves backward from New Covenant fulfillment and attempts to restore the physical forms of the Old Covenant types and shadows. The biblical movement is neither. It moves progressively from physical realities that furnish the types and imagery, through the Mosaic covenantal order, to their superior spiritual fulfillment in Christ.

Isaiah 51 is therefore pivotal. Covenant Creationism searches Genesis 1 for the creation of the Mosaic covenantal world when Isaiah already gives us a heavens and earth exactly where we should expect a specifically Mosaic heavens and earth to be established—at the Exodus-Sinai inauguration of the Mosaic covenant itself. God delivered Israel through the sea, placed His covenant words in her mouth, covered her with His hand, constituted her as His people, and entered into covenant marriage with her. Isaiah describes this covenant-making event as planting the heavens and founding the earth.

This brings us back to the question with which we began: When the Mosaic covenantal age came to its end, which “heavens and earth” should we expect to pass away—the heavens and earth originating in Genesis 1:1, or the covenantal heavens and earth established with the Mosaic covenant at Exodus-Sinai in Isaiah 51:15–16?

My contention is that the latter identification is not only possible but exegetically superior. It identifies the heavens and earth with the covenant whose termination is actually under discussion, preserves the normal biblical movement from physical type and imagery to covenantal application and ultimately spiritual fulfillment in Christ, and does not require Genesis 1 to function as the creation of the Mosaic covenantal world.

And there is a certain irony here: Martin himself once substantially agreed.

Before his former interpretation can be overturned by an appeal to the future forms in the LXX of Isaiah 51:16, therefore, those verbs must be examined carefully within the Exodus context, the Hebrew text, the Greek grammar, the covenantal marriage at Sinai, and the broader biblical development of the heavens-and-earth motif. That is where we now turn.  But let’s first develop the context and look at Isaiah 50.

Isaiah 50: The Preceding Context

While God did divorce the 10 northern tribes of Israel in the Assyrian judgment, God did not give Jerusalem a “certificate of divorce” (Isa. 50:1) during the Babylonian captivity. This final covenant divorce, however, would eventually come in AD 70 through the judgment of the Romans. God makes it clear that He has power to save because of what He did to Egypt during the exodus (Isa. 50:2). This is a dark chapter, but the righteous remnant will be able to persevere persecution and place their hope in the persecuted Messiah whose vindication will come in verses 4-9 when “all of them [the persecutors of Messiah and the remnant] will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up” (v. 9).

Let’s remember these themes of encouraging the righteous from their persecutors because of what God had done to their enemies through the first exodus as we again will see this theme in Isaiah 51. Let’s also remember that the enemies of the Messiah [and the righteous remnant] would “wear out like a garment” which is likewise picked back up in the next chapter.

Isaiah 51:1-5: Look to Abraham and a Coming Salvation

The righteous remnant is encouraged to look to their past and see God’s faithfulness to bring them forth from the dead bodies of Abraham and Sarah [a resurrection] to “multiplying” them as a nation (vss. 1-2). God had also been faithful through the exodus to bring her into Canaan or the Promised Land which was a productive land flowing with milk and honey and therefore was described as a “garden” or “Eden” (v. 3; Joel 2:3). God encourages His exiles in Babylon that they would come out of that captivity and back into their land but ultimately this is referring to the salvation coming through Messiah and a salvation and light that even the Gentiles would find hope in (vss. 3-5).

Isaiah 51:6-8: The Persecutors and Their “Heavens and Earth” Would “Wear Out” and be “Eaten” “Like a Garment”

“Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look on the earth beneath; for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner: but My salvation shall be forever, and My righteousness shall not be abolished [in the coming New Covenant heavens and earth of Isa. 65]. Hearken unto Me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is My law; fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings. For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but My righteousness shall be forever, and My salvation from generation to generation” (Isa. 51:6-8).

Here the Old Covenant “heavens and earth” are dramatically portrayed as transient and impermanent—vanishing like smoke, growing old and worn out like a garment—in sharp contrast to God’s eternal salvation and unchanging righteousness. The “persecutors” are identified as “men” whose reproach and revilings the righteous are commanded not to fear; because these oppressors themselves will be consumed like “garments” eaten by moths and worms. This takes us back to the time of Messiah in Isaiah 50:7-9 when God would vindicate Him and cause “all” of His enemies to “wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up.” This vindication of Messiah [and by extension the righteous remnant] would take place when these enemies and their heavens and earth would wear out like a garment in the events of AD 70.

a). The “Heavens and Earth” and “Garment” of Psalm 102 and Hebrews 1:10-12

Let’s first recall what we learned in Isaiah 50:4-9. This was the cry of the suffering servant Messiah (Jesus) who would be vindicated when those who persecuted Him would “wear out” and be “eaten” “like a garment.” Some commentators place the writing of Isaiah 50-51 and Psalm 102 to only be 50-80 years apart from each other or even overlapping. The Psalm does not specify it is written by David as others clearly identify.

While all Christian commentators are going to see Psalm 102:25-28 as Messianic and speaking of Christ because the author of Hebrews identifies Christ as the “LORD” who created the heavens and earth that will “wear out like a garment” (Heb. 1:10-12), a few have also seen the previous context of Psalm 102 to be referring to Christ.

Augustine saw Psalm 102 as the voice of Christ, the Head of the Church, praying in His suffering and interceding for Zion (the Church): “This Psalm is the voice of the Mediator, speaking in the person of His body, the Church… He speaks here as the afflicted one, pouring out His complaint before the Lord… He who is the eternal God became man for our sakes, and in this Psalm we hear both the voice of the Head and the members.”[1]

Athanasius used Psalm 102:25-27 as a key proof-text not only for the eternity and divinity of Christ against the Arians, but the whole psalm to the incarnate Christ praying for the restoration of His people: “The words ‘You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth…’ are spoken to the Son… For if the Son were a creature, He would not be addressed as eternal Creator.”[2]

John Calvin saw Psalm 102 as containing the voice of Christ as the suffering Mediator, while also applying it to David and the Church: “The Psalmist here speaks in the person of Christ… We see Christ, as our representative, pouring out His complaint before God in the midst of His afflictions… The latter part of the Psalm (vv. 25-28) is most properly applied to Christ, as the apostle testifies in Hebrews 1.”[3]

Martin Luther interpreted Psalm 102 as the prayer of Christ, the suffering servant, and as the voice of the Church united with Him: “This is a Psalm of Christ… He prays here as the Head of the Church in the time of His passion… ‘I am like a pelican in the wilderness’ — this is Christ alone… The Psalm speaks of the suffering and the glory of Christ and His Church.”[4]

I think when we compare both Isaiah 50-51 with Psalm 102, we can see how both the Messiah’s suffering and His vindication over His persecutors when he consumes them and their heavens and earth “like a garment” in AD 70 are speaking of Christ and events coming in AD 70:

Theme	Isaiah 50–51	Psalm 102	Messianic Fulfillment in Jesus
Suffering & Affliction	Isa 50:6 – “I gave my back to those who strike… I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting.”	Ps 102:3-11 – Bones burning, heart withered, days like smoke, reproach from enemies.	Jesus’ scourging, spitting, and crucifixion (Matt 26:67; 27:30).
Trust in God’s Help	Isa 50:7 – “The Lord GOD helps me… I have set my face like a flint.”	Ps 102:1-2, 12-13 – “Hear my prayer, O LORD… But you, O LORD, shall endure forever.”	Jesus’ Gethsemane prayer and confidence in the Father (Luke 22:42; John 12:27-28).
Vindication & Restoration	Isa 50:8-9 – “He who vindicates me is near… Who will declare me guilty?”	Ps 102:2, 13-22 – “answer me speedily…” God will arise and have pity on Zion; nations will fear His name.	Resurrection and exaltation of Christ (Phil 2:9-11; Heb 1:3) and answer to be vindicated over His enemies in AD 70 (Lk. 18:7-8; 20:15-16; Matt. 23)
Enemies & “Heavens and Earth” “Wear Out Like a Garment”	Isa 50:9 – Enemies “will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up.” Isa 51:6 – “The heavens vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment.”	Ps 102:25-26 – “Of old you laid the foundation of the earth… they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment.”	Judgment on those who opposed Christ and the old order (AD 70 judgment). Hebrews 1:10-12 applies Ps 102:25-27 directly to Jesus.
Eternal Salvation	Isa 51:6-8 – “My salvation will be forever… My righteousness to all generations.”	Ps 102:27-28 – “You are the same, and your years have no end. The children of your servants shall dwell secure.”	Christ’s eternal reign and the security of His people (Heb 1:8-12; Rev 21:1-4).

But what “heavens and earth” is it in Isaiah 51, Psalm 102 and Hebrews 1 that vanishes “like a garment” in AD 70? Tim and CC affirm it was the “heavens and earth” of Genesis 1:1 while I affirm it is the “heavens and earth” of Isaiah 51:9-16 and that of Old Covenant Israel that was created at Sinai when the marriage also took place (Ex. 19-24) which is a motif we will see again in Revelation 21:1-2.

“In the Beginning” or “Of Old” in Psalm 102:25 and Hebrews 1:10?

One of the key “arguments” in the Covenant Creation view promoted by Tim Martin is that Psalm 102:25 (quoted in Hebrews 1:10) refers to the original creation of Genesis 1:1 (“in the beginning”). Martin and others often appeal to the Septuagint (LXX) to support this. However, a careful look at the original languages and the broader context of Hebrews shows the opposite: the wording actually strengthens the view that this passage describes the passing of the Mosaic old covenant order in AD 70, not the Genesis 1:1 creation account.

The Hebrew Text

Psalm 102:25: Of old / Long ago / In times past (ləpānîm) you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. The key term ləpānîm emphasizes antiquity—“in former times,” “long ago,” or “before.” Notably, the psalmist does not use the language of Genesis 1:1, which begins with bərēʾšît (“In the beginning”).

The Septuagint (LXX) Translation

Psalm 102:25 (LXX 101:26): Of old / In the beginning (κατ’ ἀρχάς, kat’ archas), O Lord, you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands. By comparison, the LXX of Genesis 1:1 uses the precise phrase ἐν ἀρχῇ (en archē, “In the beginning”). Hebrews 1:10 quotes the LXX of Psalm 102:25 almost verbatim: “And, You, of old / in the beginning (κατ’ ἀρχάς), O Lord, laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands.” Many English translations (Rotherham, CEV, GNT, NLT, etc.) rightly render the phrase as “of old” or “long ago” to capture the nuance.

Summary Comparison

Passage	Key Phrase (Transliteration)	Common English Rendering	Implication
Psalm 102:25 (MT)	ləpānîm	Of old / Long ago	Emphasizes antiquity
Genesis 1:1	bərēʾšît	In the beginning	Absolute origin of creation
LXX of Psalm 102:25	κατ’ ἀρχάς	Of old / In the beginning	Flexible temporal phrase
Hebrews 1:10	κατ’ ἀρχάς	Of old / In the beginning	Follows LXX, not forcing Genesis 1:1 language

Why the LXX Appeal Actually Strengthens the Mosaic Old Covenant View

If the LXX translator or the author of Hebrews had wanted to make an unmistakable connection to Genesis 1:1, they could have used the exact phrase ἐν ἀρχῇ. Instead, they chose κατ’ ἀρχάς, a broader expression better translated as “of old” or “long ago.” This is not a minor detail.

When the New Testament writers do intend to point back to the Genesis creation, they consistently use clearer, more specific language. Consider Jesus Himself:

Matthew 19:4 – “Have you not read that he who created them ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς (ap’ archēs, from the beginning) made them male and female…”

Mark 10:6 – “But ἀπὸ δὲ ἀρχῆς κτίσεως (apo de archēs ktiseōs, from the beginning of creation), ‘God made them male and female.’”

Jesus deliberately ties “the beginning” (and even more explicitly “the beginning of creation”) to the Genesis 1–2 account of humanity. Other New Testament writers do the same when they mean the absolute origin of the physical cosmos:

John 1:1 – “Ἐν ἀρχῇ was the Word…” (a deliberate echo of Genesis 1:1 LXX)

Mark 13:19 – tribulation “such as has not been ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς κτίσεως ἣν ἔκτισεν ὁ θεός” (“from the beginning of the creation that God created”)

2 Peter 3:4 – things continue “as they were ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς κτίσεως” (“from the beginning of creation”)

The author of Hebrews, by contrast, retains the more flexible κατ’ ἀρχάς. He then immediately links this language to the temporary Mosaic order that was “becoming obsolete and growing old” and “ready to vanish away” (Heb 8:13; cf. the shaking and removal of the “things that have been made” in Heb 12:26–28). In the context of Hebrews 12 the “things created” that are shaken and removed are the Mosaic realities established at Sinai, not the physical cosmos of Genesis 1:1.Thus the linguistic evidence and the broader argument of Hebrews show that Hebrews 1:10 is not pointing back to Genesis 1:1. Rather, it describes the temporary Mosaic old-covenant “heavens and earth” established “of old” at Sinai (as Isaiah 51:9–16 teaches) that was judged and passed away in AD 70, while the new-covenant order remains unshakable.

Tim Martin’s appeal to the LXX does not help the Covenant Creation case. In reality, it makes the AD 70 fulfillment of the Mosaic old covenant’s end even stronger. The author of Hebrews carefully chose wording that fits the temporary, covenantal order that was about to vanish in the first century. This provides a coherent, redemptive-historical reading of the passage that aligns with the overall message of Hebrews. The fact that Abel is mentioned in Hebrews 11 does not even remotely prove that Hebrews is discussing the passing away of the heavens and earth of Genesis 1:1 in AD 70. Such statements are pure desperation.

Psalm 102 itself looks forward to the “appointed time” when God would arise, have pity on Zion, build her up, and appear in His glory. The psalmist anticipates a new people being created: “Let this be recorded for a generation to come [Deut. 32:5, 20], so that a people [or “nation” Deut. 32:20-21] yet to be created may praise the LORD” (Ps. 102:18).

The striking parallel between Psalm 102 and Isaiah 65–66 is especially important. In both passages God brings about the de-creation of the Old Covenant people while simultaneously creating a new people. Psalm 102:18 declares a “people yet to be created,” and Isaiah 65–66 describes the same reality: the old covenant order is judged and removed while a new people or a new nation is formed as a new Jerusalem or new heavens and new earth (Isa. 65:17-18; 66:8, 22).

In Isaiah 65:1; 17-19 there is a New Covenant “nation” that is equivalent to the New Covenant “new Jerusalem” and “new heavens and earth.” And contextually it is the Old Covenant nation of Israel that is violating Torah which causes her nation, Jerusalem, and heavens and earth to pass away and therefore has nothing to do with Genesis 1:1. It should be very obvious that there is no Mosaic law, no nation of Israel, and no city of Jerusalem in Genesis 1.

Isaiah 51:9–16: The Purpose for the Exodus (Ex. 19-24) Backdrop

“Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Was it not You who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon? Was it not You who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep; who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over?”

The OT consistently identifies Rahab and the dragon (tannin) with Egypt and Pharaoh (Isaiah 30:7; Ezekiel 29:3 and 32:2; Psalm 74:13–14; Psalm 89:10). Isaiah 51:9–10 is therefore poetic historical recall of God’s decisive victory over Egypt at the Red Sea. This Exodus backdrop supplies the immediate grammatical and contextual foundation for the sea-stirring language of v. 15 and the planting/founding language of v. 16.

Let’s not forget the context and exhortation to not “fear men” that Isaiah has been dealing with in verses 7-8. It is again brought up in verse 12—“who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is like grass…”. The appeal to Exodus 19-24 is to remind them that when persecution will come from their own Jewish brethren (that would wear out like a garment Heb. 1:10), that this kind of thing happened when Pharaoh and Egypt persecuted them. Remember the story and origins of the “heavens and earth” of verse 6? When I created Israel as my heavens and earth (vss. 15-16) you had persecution that came from Pharaoh and the Egyptians and I vindicated you by destroying them and “redeeming” you (vss. 9-10)? This pattern will be played out again and you will be ransomed again through another or second exodus—when you come to a new Zion / new Jerusalem / new heavens and earth where there will be no more sorrow (v. 11; Isa. 65-66).

This pattern of pointing back to the first Exodus as encouragement and guarantee for future salvation is deeply rooted in the Old Testament prophetic tradition. Throughout Isaiah (especially chapters 40–55) and elsewhere in the prophets, God consistently recalls the Red Sea deliverance, the wilderness provision, and the Sinai covenant as the prototype and assurance that He will act again on behalf of His people. For example:

Isaiah 43:16-21 explicitly recalls the first Exodus (“who made a way in the sea… who brought out the chariot and horse”) only to declare, “Do not remember the former things… Behold, I am doing a new thing” — a greater deliverance that still draws its authority from the original event.

Isaiah 50:2 likewise recalls God’s power in the exodus event to support that Messiah and His remnant will be “vindicated” when God judges their persecutors—“…all of them will wear out like a garment…” (v. 9).

Isaiah 51:9-16 is penned to encourage the righteous remnant to not fear the heavens and earth and men within that world that will persecute them because of what He did when He first created Israel as a “heavens and earth” and destroyed Pharaoh and the Egyptian armies.

Isaiah 52:11-12 calls the exiles to depart from Babylon, “not in haste… for the LORD will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard,” echoing the orderly, protected Exodus from Egypt.

Jeremiah 16:14-15; 23:7-8 declares that the day is coming when people will no longer swear by the God who brought Israel out of Egypt, but by the God who brings them back from the north and from all the lands of exile — yet the first Exodus remains the foundational reference point.

Ezekiel 20:33-44 portrays a future gathering and wilderness judgment explicitly modeled on God’s dealings with Israel in the Exodus generation.

Hosea 2:14-15; 11:1; 12:9, 13; 13:4-5 repeatedly uses Exodus and wilderness imagery to describe both past judgment and future restoration.

Micah 6:4 and Amos 2:9-10; 3:1-2; 9:7 likewise ground future hope in the original Exodus deliverance.

Again, the point to the righteous remnant—don’t fear the persecutions that are coming from the people of the “heavens and earth” of verses 6-8, because remember when I created that heavens and earth in Exodus 19-24, I was faithful to protect you from Pharaoh and the Egyptians then and I will do it again. This is why in Revelation the Jewish persecutors are called “Egypt” and thus this is the “heavens and earth” (Rev. 21:1) that would pass away in AD 70. There is a beautiful pattern of encouragement from the first to coming second exodus in relation to the “heavens and earth” that is being discussed in Isaiah 51 and futurists and CC’s completely miss it in order to keep their unbiblical systems!

The Key Verses – 15-16

For I am the LORD your God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—the LORD of hosts is his name. And I have put my words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of my hand, establishing the heavens and laying the foundation of the earth, and saying to Zion, ‘You are my people.’Grammar of Isaiah 51:15-16 (Hebrew)

Verse 15 identifies YHWH as “the LORD your God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—the LORD of hosts is His name.” Verse 16 continues directly: “I have put (nāṯattî – perfect tense, completed action) My words in your mouth and I have covered (kissîtî – perfect) you with the shadow of My hand, that I may plant (lənaṭōaʿ – purpose infinitive) the heavens, that I may lay the foundations (ləyassēd – purpose infinitive) of the earth, and that I may say (ləʾēmōr – purpose infinitive) to Zion, ‘You are My people.’”

The two main verbs are perfect tense (past, completed actions). The three purpose infinitives flow directly from those completed actions and describe what God accomplished when He (1) divided the sea (vv. 9–10, 15—Rahab/dragon = Egypt), (2) placed His words/law in Israel’s mouth at Sinai, and (3) covered them with the shadow of His hand (the pillar of cloud in the wilderness). The final purpose clause is the classic covenant formula itself.

John Owen rightly concludes that the planting and founding occurred at the Exodus and Sinai when God formed Israel into a church and state:

“The time when the work here mentioned, of planting the heavens, and laying the foundation of the earth, was performed by God, was when he ‘divided the sea’ (v. 15), and gave the law (v. 16), and said to Zion, ‘Thou art my people’—that is, when he took the children of Israel out of Egypt, and formed them in the wilderness into a congregation of believers and a civil state. Then he planted the heavens, and laid the foundation of the earth—made the new world; that is, brought forth order, and government, and beauty, from the confusion wherein before they were. This is the planting of the heavens, and laying the foundation of the earth in the world.”[5]

The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge concurs that “heaven” and “earth” here are symbolic of the political and covenantal universe formed at Sinai:

“The heavens. ‘Heaven’ and ‘earth’ are here put by symbolic language for a political universe. That is, that I might make those who were but scattered persons and slaves in Egypt before, a kingdom and polity, to be governed by their own laws and magistrates.”[6]

Targum Jonathan Confirmation

The ancient Targum Jonathan renders the verse with past protective action leading to covenant formation: “I have put the words of my prophecy in thy mouth, and with the shadow of my power have I protected thee, to raise up the nation… and to establish the congregation… and to say to the inhabitants of Zion, Ye are my people.” It applies the planting/founding language directly to the raising up and establishing of Israel as God’s covenant people at Sinai.[7]

The Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 99b:

“‘And I have put My words in your mouth, and have covered you in the shadow of My hand, to plant the heavens and to lay the foundation of the earth, and say to Zion: You are My people’ (Isaiah 51:16). One who has the word of God placed in his mouth through Torah study has established heaven and earth.” (Context includes Rabbi Yoḥanan’s related teaching on Torah study.).[8]

The Talmud explicitly equates the cosmic imagery (“plant the heavens and lay the foundation of the earth”) with having “the word of God placed in his mouth through Torah study.” The giving of the Torah at Sinai (Exodus 19–20, 24) is the defining moment when God placed His words with Israel (through Moses) and established the covenant. The phrase “You are My people” echoes the covenant formula at Sinai (Exodus 19:5–6: “you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”; cf. Exodus 6:7). The Jews believed Torah study is the ongoing realization of that Sinai covenant. This rabbinic interpretation reads the verse as describing the covenantal establishment of Israel’s ordered world through the Torah given at Sinai.

Response to the Claim That Israel Was Already “My People” Before the Exodus/Sinai

Tim cites Exodus 5:1 as evidence of a pre-Exodus status. While that is anticipatory language, Isaiah 51 itself demonstrates the progressive formation of God’s people. Verse 2 reminds the exiles: “Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who bore you; for I called him when he was but one, and blessed him and multiplied him.” Abraham and Sarah began as “but one”; the full covenant nation required the Exodus redemption and Sinai ratification.

There is no contradiction between Isaiah 51:2’s own reminder that God started with Abraham and Sarah as “but one” before multiplying them into the covenant nation, and the fact that their descendants could be called “My people” before Sinai while still being officially constituted as such at Sinai when they agreed to the terms of the covenant. Isaiah 51:2 highlights the beginning point of God’s electing and blessing work with the patriarchs. God’s anticipatory claim of ownership over Abraham’s descendants (as in Exodus 5:1 in Egypt) was real and served to assert His right to redeem them. However, the formal, official, and mutual covenant ratification—where Israel as a nation agreed to the terms of the covenant and God fully declared them His treasured possession—took place at Sinai. This is when the relationship reached its climactic definition through the giving of the law and the people’s acceptance (Exod 19:5-8). The progressive nature of God’s dealings means the anticipatory title could be used earlier, while the definitive covenant-making declaration and constitution of the nation as God’s people occurred at Sinai.

The formal covenant-making declaration is explicitly fulfilled at those events:

Exodus 6:7 — “I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.”

Exodus 19:5–6 — “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

Deuteronomy 26:17–18 — “You have declared this day that the LORD is your God… And the LORD has declared this day that you are his people, his treasured possession as he promised…”

Isaiah 51:16’s purpose infinitive points directly to this Sinai ratification moment.

Deuteronomy 27 functions as a covenant renewal ceremony that solidifies the Exodus–Sinai founding event as the origin of Israel’s “heavens and earth.”

Deuteronomy 27:9-10 — “Then Moses and the Levitical priests said to all Israel, ‘Be silent and listen, O Israel! This day you have become the people of the LORD your God. You shall therefore obey the voice of the LORD your God…’” (covenant identity + obedience to the words in their mouth).

Deuteronomy 27:1-8 — Writing and reading “all the words of this law” on stones + altar on the mountains (public founding of the ordered society).

Deuteronomy 27:26 — “Cursed be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them” (ties to the law placed in the mouth and the consequences for the “heavens and earth” order).

These elements show the Sinai/Moab covenant as the planting of an ordered covenant world (political + religious), exactly as Owen and the TSK describe in Isaiah 51.

Isaiah 51:15–16, the LXX Futures, and the Exodus–Sinai Creation of “Heaven and Earth”

Tim Martin’s Earlier Interpretation—and Why His Change Matters

Before examining Tim Martin’s present appeal to the future forms in the LXX of Isaiah 51:16, it is important to recognize that he formerly interpreted Isaiah 51:15–16 essentially as I do. In Beyond Creation Science, Timothy Martin and Jeff Vaughn wrote:

“Isaiah [in Isa. 51:15–16] uses prophetic poetry to recount the crossing of the Red Sea as Israel left Egypt. God placed his words in Israel’s mouth at Sinai with the giving of the Law. Yet notice how the prophet alleges to Israel’s history as a creation of ‘heaven and earth.’ Israel became God’s new creation at the time of the Exodus. Peter [in 2 Pet. 3] is speaking about the passing away of the heavens and earth in terms symmetrical with the prophet Isaiah.”

—Timothy Martin and Jeff Vaughn, Beyond Creation Science: New Covenant Creation from Genesis to Revelation, 76.

Martin could hardly have stated the Exodus-Sinai interpretation more clearly. The sea is the Red Sea. God’s words are placed in Israel’s mouth at Sinai through the giving of the Law. And this historical Exodus-Sinai event constituted Israel as a new creation of “heaven and earth.” In Martin’s own words, “Israel became God’s new creation at the time of the Exodus.”

Martin now says that his reason for abandoning this interpretation is the LXX rendering of Isaiah 51:16 and its future forms. We will take that stated reason seriously and deal with it directly below. I do not believe, however, that the LXX is the real exegetical reason this interpretation must change within his present system. The larger problem is that Martin’s former interpretation is incompatible with what Covenant Creationism now requires Isaiah 51 to do.

If Isaiah 51:15–16 establishes Israel as a covenantal “heavens and earth” at Exodus-Sinai—as Martin himself formerly taught—then the Old Covenant heavens and earth have already been historically located at the very event in which the Mosaic covenant nation was constituted. That leaves no exegetical necessity for Covenant Creationism to relocate the creation of the Old Covenant world backward into Genesis 1.

In my judgment, therefore, Martin’s changed interpretation of Isaiah 51 is not merely an incidental consequence of noticing the LXX futures; it is a change his Covenant Creationism system requires. I cannot prove Martin’s subjective motive, nor do I need to. My argument concerns the objective demands of the system.

Covenant Creationism requires Genesis 1 to function as the creation of the Old Covenant heavens and earth. The “heavens and earth” beginning in Genesis must then become the covenantal cosmos that grows old, is shaken, and passes away in the later biblical de-creation texts—Psalm 102:25–27; Matthew 5:17–18; 24:35; Hebrews 1:10–12; 12:26–28; 2 Peter 3; and Revelation 21:1–2. The system depends upon establishing this controlling sequence:

Genesis 1 → creation of the Old Covenant heavens and earth → de-creation of that Genesis covenantal world → New Covenant heavens and earth.

But Martin’s earlier interpretation of Isaiah 51:15–16 introduces another covenantal creation directly into the middle of that construction—and not just any creation, but the creation of Mosaic Israel itself.

If Martin was right when he wrote that God placed His words in Israel’s mouth “at Sinai with the giving of the Law,” and that at this time “Israel became God’s new creation,” then Isaiah supplies the far more immediate covenant-historical sequence:

Exodus–Sinai → creation of Israel’s Mosaic heavens and earth → de-creation of the Mosaic covenantal world → New Covenant heavens and earth.

That is a fundamental problem for the necessity of Covenant Creationism’s interpretation of Genesis 1.

Why must Genesis 1 be transformed into the creation of the Old Covenant world if Isaiah explicitly locates the creation of Israel’s covenantal heavens and earth at the historical moment when the Old Covenant nation was actually constituted?

And more importantly, which covenantal heavens and earth should we expect the New Testament to describe as growing old and passing away—the covenant established with Israel at Sinai, or an alleged Old Covenant order already created in Genesis 1 centuries before the Mosaic covenant existed?

The New Testament itself points us toward the former. The covenant that becomes obsolete and grows old is the Mosaic covenant (Heb. 8:13). The order that can be shaken and removed gives way to the unshakable kingdom (Heb. 12:26–28). Jesus connects the continuing authority of the Law and Prophets with heaven and earth in Matthew 5:17–18. Thus, if Isaiah 51:15–16 calls the constitution of Mosaic Israel the planting and founding of “heaven and earth,” Scripture has already supplied the covenantal cosmos whose eventual de-creation we should expect.

This means Martin’s earlier interpretation creates a structural problem for Covenant Creationism that cannot be solved merely by observing that Genesis 1 also contains creation language. The question is not whether Genesis 1 contains “heavens and earth.” Of course it does. The question is which covenantal heavens and earth Scripture identifies with the Mosaic order that was destined to pass away. Isaiah 51:15–16 provides an explicit candidate: the heavens and earth associated with the Red Sea, the giving of God’s words, Sinai, and God’s declaration to Israel, “You are My people.”

Consequently, Martin’s change of interpretation does something indispensable for his later system. It removes a Mosaic covenantal creation from Isaiah 51 that would otherwise compete directly with—and undermine—the claim that Genesis 1 is the creation of the Old Covenant heavens and earth that pass away in AD 70.

Martin says the LXX caused him to change his interpretation. I do not believe that adequately explains the exegetical necessity for the change. I believe the deeper problem is that Covenant Creationism needs the change. If Martin’s former interpretation stands, then the system loses one of its central reasons for identifying Genesis 1 as the Old Covenant creation.

Nevertheless, because Martin has specifically appealed to the LXX as his stated reason for abandoning his former interpretation, we must deal with that argument on its own terms. The question is not whether θήσω (“I will put”), σκεπάσω (“I will shelter”), and ἐρεῖ (“he will say”) are future forms. They plainly are. The question is whether those futures actually require Isaiah 51:16 to be removed from the Exodus-Sinai setting that Martin himself formerly recognized and relocated into an eschatological future.

As we shall see, they do not.

The LXX of Isaiah 51:16 and the Future-Tense Appeal

Martin appeals to the future forms θήσω (“I will put”) and σκεπάσω (“I will shelter/cover”) in the LXX of Isaiah 51:16 as evidence that the planting and founding of the heavens and earth must refer to a future eschatological new creation, ultimately fulfilled in AD 70. But this conclusion does not follow from the Greek. There are at least three ways of addressing the LXX rendering, and none requires abandoning the Exodus-Sinai interpretation Martin himself formerly defended.

A Possible Reading: Future Restoration Grounded in a Past Creation

One possible explanation—and the one I initially offered—is that the LXX distinguishes between God’s future restoration of Zion and His past establishment of Israel’s covenantal heavens and earth. On this reading, because Isaiah is addressing Zion with coming restoration in view, θήσω (“I will put”) and σκεπάσω (“I will shelter”) describe divine actions future to Isaiah, while the following aorist verbs refer backward to what God had already accomplished.

Brenton’s translation clearly displays this distinction:

“I will put my words into thy mouth, and I will shelter thee under the shadow of mine hand, with which I fixed the sky, and founded the earth.”

The Greek moves from the futures θήσω and σκεπάσω to the aorist indicatives ἔστησα (“I established/fixed”) and ἐθεμελίωσα (“I founded”). On this interpretation, God promises that He will put His words in Zion’s mouth and willshelter her, while reminding her that He is the God who already established the heaven and founded the earth.

This is a possible reading, and importantly, it still does not support Martin’s conclusion. Even if the first two verbs describe restoration future to Isaiah, the LXX does not place the actual establishment of the heavens and earth in that future restoration. The Greek translator uses aorists for those acts. Therefore, the LXX cannot simply be cited as evidence that the “heavens and earth” of Isaiah 51:16 were themselves a New Covenant creation awaiting fulfillment in AD 70.

Nevertheless, this interpretation requires us to divide the temporal reference of the verse: “I will put My words in your mouth” and “I will shelter you” belong to a restoration future to Isaiah, while “I established the heaven and founded the earth” refers to an earlier historical event.

There is, however, a better contextual explanation—one that preserves the unity of the entire passage and allows even the LXX futures to remain within the historical Exodus-Sinai event.

The Better Reading: The LXX Futures Viewed Prospectively from Within the Historical Exodus

Isaiah himself establishes the controlling historical viewpoint in verses 9–10:

“Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in the days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon? Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over?”

Isaiah has deliberately transported his audience backward into the historical Exodus. Rahab and the dragon represent the Egyptian enemy; God dries up the sea; and His redeemed pass through it. Verse 15 then returns to the same historical imagery by identifying YHWH as Israel’s God who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar.

Once this historical viewpoint is recognized, there is no necessity to understand the LXX futures as future from Isaiah’s own time. They may instead be understood relatively or prospectively from within the remembered Exodus narrative itself.

In other words, Isaiah takes us back to the Red Sea and then moves us forward through the historical sequence:

God has defeated Egypt and brought His redeemed through the sea. What will He do next? He will bring them to Sinai, put His words in their mouth, cover them under His hand, constitute their covenantal heavens and earth, and declare to Zion, “You are My people.”

This is a natural way of recounting past events from an internal narrative viewpoint. A historian might write, “Israel has now crossed the Red Sea. God will next bring them to Sinai, give them His Law, enter covenant with them, and constitute them as His holy nation.” Every one of those events is past from the standpoint of the historian and his readers. Yet the future is entirely natural because the historian has temporarily adopted a viewpoint from within the historical narrative. The events are future relative to that point in the story, not future relative to the writer or reader.

This provides a much more unified explanation of the LXX’s θήσω: “I will put My words in your mouth.”

From the standpoint of the Red Sea crossing recalled in Isaiah 51:9–10 and again evoked in verse 15, Sinai is still the next great covenantal event. God will put His words before Israel there.

And this is precisely what happened.

At Sinai God declared:

“If you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, you shall be My treasured possession among all peoples… and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod. 19:5–6).

Israel responded:

“All that the LORD has spoken we will do” (Exod. 19:8).

Again, at the formal covenant ratification:

“Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, ‘All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do’” (Exod. 24:3).

And after Moses read “the Book of the Covenant”:

“All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient” (Exod. 24:7).

This makes Isaiah’s expression “I will put My words in your mouth” especially appropriate to Sinai. God gave His covenant words to Israel, Israel received and confessed those words, and the people pledged obedience to them as the covenant was formally ratified.

The sequence is remarkably coherent:

Red Sea redemption → Sinai revelation → God’s words placed before and confessed by Israel → covenant ratification → Israel constituted as God’s covenant nation.

Exodus 6:7 and the Third LXX Future Strengthen This Reading

There is another strong reason to understand the LXX futures from within the Exodus sequence. Before the Exodus-Sinai process was completed, God Himself spoke prospectively about the formation of His covenant people:

“I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God” (Exod. 6:7).

The LXX itself expresses this prospectively:

λήμψομαι ὑμᾶς ἐμαυτῷ λαὸν… καὶ ἔσομαι ὑμῶν θεός
“I will take you to Myself as a people… and I will be your God.”

The futures λήμψομαι (“I will take”) and ἔσομαι (“I will be”) obviously do not point to the Babylonian restoration or AD 70. They are future from within the unfolding Exodus narrative. God is promising what He is about to accomplish through Israel’s redemption from Egypt and covenantal constitution.

This becomes particularly significant because Isaiah 51:16 does not contain only the futures θήσω (“I will put”) and σκεπάσω (“I will shelter”). The LXX also concludes with another future form, ἐρεῖ, in connection with the covenant declaration to Zion:

“You are My people.”

Thus, the prospective presentation extends into the covenantal declaration itself.

This creates a striking relationship between Exodus 6:7 and Isaiah 51:16. Before Israel’s redemption and covenantal constitution were completed, God declared:

“I will take you to be My people.”

Isaiah’s retrospective description culminates with:

“You are My people.”

The movement from “I will take you to be My people” before the Exodus-Sinai covenant was completed to “You are My people” in Isaiah’s retrospective description is exactly what we would expect if Isaiah 51:16 is looking back upon the covenantal constitution of Israel.

Thus the sequence is not arbitrary:

“I will take you to be My people” (Exod. 6:7) → redemption from Egypt → passage through the sea → giving of God’s words at Sinai → covenant ratification → “You are My people” (Isa. 51:16).

The presence of ἐρεῖ alongside θήσω and σκεπάσω therefore strengthens the possibility that the LXX is presenting the remembered Exodus-Sinai sequence prospectively from within the historical narrative rather than predicting a new covenantal creation still future from Isaiah’s own day.

From the historical standpoint created by Isaiah 51:9–10, God has defeated Egypt and brought Israel through the sea. What follows next in the story? He will put His words before Israel at Sinai, will shelter His people, and will declare the covenant relationship anticipated in Exodus 6:7. From Isaiah’s actual historical standpoint, however, the entire Exodus-Sinai sequence had occurred centuries earlier.

It is important to state the argument carefully. We are not claiming that a Greek future tense somehow “means past.”The futures retain their prospective force. The question is the temporal vantage point from which that future is expressed. They are genuine futures relative to a point within the remembered Exodus story, while the entire story remains past relative to Isaiah.

The argument is therefore primarily one of discourse perspective, not an appeal to some special grammatical category in which Greek future forms acquire past-tense meaning. The question is not merely what tense a verb possesses in isolation, but from what temporal vantage point the discourse presents its action.

Isaiah 51:9–10 explicitly establishes a retrospective historical frame, and verses 15–16 return to that frame. Reading the futures prospectively from within that recalled history preserves the unity of the passage rather than dividing its closely connected covenantal actions between Sinai and another event centuries later.

The Hebrew Confirms the Historical Orientation

This understanding of the LXX is strengthened by the underlying Hebrew. Isaiah 51:16 does not require us to place the giving of God’s words in Zion’s mouth in Isaiah’s future. In the Exodus context established by verses 9–15, the Hebrew naturally presents God’s placing of His words and His protective covering as antecedent actions:

“And I put/have put My words in your mouth, and I covered/have covered you in the shadow of My hand, to plant the heavens and to found the earth and to say to Zion, ‘You are My people.’”

The following infinitival expressions—“to plant the heavens,” “to found the earth,” and “to say to Zion, ‘You are My people’”—possess no independent future tense requiring fulfillment after Isaiah. Their temporal significance must be determined from the actions to which they are attached and from the surrounding context.

That context is explicitly historical. God has just been identified as the One who defeated Egypt, dried up the sea, and made a way for His redeemed to pass through. He then placed His words before Israel and constituted them as His covenant people. Thus the Hebrew coheres naturally with the Exodus-Sinai sequence.

This is important when evaluating the LXX. The Greek translator rendered part of this Hebrew verbal sequence with θήσω (“I will put”) and σκεπάσω (“I will shelter”). But the translator’s choice of Greek futures does not by itself establish that the historical referents of those verbs must lie in Isaiah’s future. The surrounding discourse must still determine the temporal perspective.

The futures may therefore be understood relatively or prospectively from within the historical Exodus scene. From Isaiah’s standpoint, Sinai was centuries past; from the standpoint of Israel having passed through the Red Sea, Sinai was still ahead.

This harmonizes the LXX with both the Hebrew and the immediate context without requiring us to divide Isaiah 51:16 between two different covenantal events.

Even the LXX Places the Establishment of Heaven and Earth in Antecedent Time

There is another serious problem with using the LXX to establish Martin’s interpretation. Even if one rejects the prospective-from-within-the-Exodus explanation of θήσω and σκεπάσω, the Greek still does not place the actual establishment of heaven and earth in Isaiah’s future.

When the LXX reaches those actions, it changes from future verbs to aorist indicatives:

“I will put [θήσω] My words into your mouth, and I will shelter [σκεπάσω] you under the shadow of My hand, with which I established [ἔστησα] the heaven and founded [ἐθεμελίωσα] the earth.”

The contrast is significant:

θήσω — “I will put”
σκεπάσω — “I will shelter”
ἔστησα — “I established”
ἐθεμελίωσα — “I founded”
ἐρεῖ — “he will say”

Thus, even if θήσω, σκεπάσω, and ἐρεῖ were interpreted as absolute futures from Isaiah’s own historical standpoint, the argument still would not establish that the heavens and earth themselves were created in Isaiah’s future. The Greek translator describes their establishment and founding as antecedent.

The relative clause ἐν ᾗ (“with which/by which/in which”) reinforces the connection. The protective hand spoken of in the verse is identified with the hand by which God established the heaven and founded the earth. At minimum, therefore, the Greek itself distinguishes its future presentation of the surrounding actions from its antecedent presentation of the actual establishment and founding.

The question therefore remains: What antecedent establishment of a “heaven and earth” does Isaiah’s context identify?

The passage has already supplied the answer. God defeated Egypt, brought His redeemed through the sea, protected them, placed His covenant words before them, and constituted Zion as His people. These are not disconnected motifs. Together they describe the Exodus-Sinai formation of Israel.

This is precisely why John Owen understood the passage as referring to the time when God divided the sea, gave Israel the Law, and formed them in the wilderness into “a congregation of believers and a civil state.” The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge similarly understands the “heaven” and “earth” as symbolic of the political universe in which former Egyptian slaves became “a kingdom and polity” governed by their own laws and magistrates.

The Targum Jonathan provides additional confirmation of this corporate and covenantal interpretation by paraphrasing the cosmic language in terms of God acting “to raise up the nation” and “to establish the congregation” and declaring to Zion, “Ye are My people.” The heavens and earth are therefore understood in relation to the ordered covenantal world of God’s people rather than requiring reference to the physical cosmos.

The Babylonian Talmud provides another significant Jewish interpretation. In Sanhedrin 99b, Isaiah 51:16 is cited in connection with Torah: “I have placed My words in your mouth… to plant the heavens and lay the foundations of the earth.” The rabbinic discussion associates God’s words/Torah with the planting and founding language, while also drawing attention to God’s protective hand and the declaration concerning His people.

Neither the Targum nor Sanhedrin 99b explicitly states that Isaiah 51:16 refers to the historical giving of the Law at Sinai, and they should not be made to say more than they do. Their value is corroborative. The Targum understands the cosmic imagery corporately in terms of the nation and congregation, while the Talmud recognizes the close relationship between God’s words/Torah, divine protection, and the planting and founding of heaven and earth. Isaiah’s own Exodus context supplies the historical setting in which these covenantal elements converge.

A Final Consideration: The Hebrew Text Must Remain Controlling

There is one final possibility that should not be overlooked.

The Septuagint is an ancient and extremely valuable Jewish translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. It frequently provides important evidence for how ancient Jewish translators understood their Hebrew text, and its importance becomes especially pronounced when New Testament authors quote it in their own inspired writings. Nevertheless, the LXX translators themselves should not simply be assumed to have been inspired in every individual translation choice. Like other translators, they sometimes translated interpretively rather than reproducing Hebrew verbal and syntactical relationships mechanically.

Therefore, the LXX must ultimately be evaluated in relation to the Hebrew text from which it was translated.

This becomes relevant in Isaiah 51:16 because the Hebrew does not require the placing of God’s words in Israel’s mouth to be future to Isaiah. In the Exodus context established by verses 9–15, the Hebrew naturally presents God’s placing of His words and His protective covering as antecedent actions associated with His planting of the heavens, founding of the earth, and declaration to Zion, “You are My people.”

The LXX, however, renders the first two actions with the futures θήσω (“I will put”) and σκεπάσω (“I will shelter”), and also employs ἐρεῖ in connection with the concluding covenant declaration. As argued above, there is no necessary contradiction. These futures can reasonably be harmonized with the Hebrew by understanding them prospectively from within the remembered Exodus narrative: after bringing Israel through the Red Sea, God “will” bring them to Sinai, place His words before them, protect them, and formally constitute them as His covenant people.

This is, in my judgment, the better solution because it allows us to take the Greek forms seriously without allowing them to overturn either the Hebrew or the controlling Exodus context.

But suppose someone rejects this harmonization. Suppose it is insisted that the LXX translator intended θήσω, σκεπάσω, and ἐρεῖ to describe events absolutely future from Isaiah’s own historical standpoint. Even then, this would establish only how the Greek translator interpreted or recast the Hebrew, not what the Hebrew text itself grammatically requires.

That distinction is important.

Isaiah 51:16 is not quoted in the New Testament in a manner that supplies us with an inspired apostolic interpretation of these particular LXX future forms. We therefore have no New Testament author requiring us to understand θήσω (“I will put”), σκεπάσω (“I will shelter”), or ἐρεῖ as predictions of the New Covenant creation or identifying these Greek futures with an AD 70 fulfillment.

Accordingly, the interpretive order should remain clear. First, interpret the Hebrew text of Isaiah in its immediate grammatical, literary, and historical context. Second, use the LXX as an important ancient witness to how the Hebrew text was translated and understood. Third, where the LXX differs in verbal presentation from the Hebrew, seek a reasonable harmonization when the immediate context permits one. Fourth, where such harmonization cannot be established, the interpretive choice of the Greek translator cannot be permitted to overturn the meaning indicated by the Hebrew text itself.

This is not a dismissal of the Septuagint. It is simply the recognition that an ancient translation must not be made textually determinative over the Hebrew text—particularly where no inspired New Testament writer quotes the passage and establishes the Greek rendering as the authoritative interpretation.

Three Possible Readings—None Supports a Future Creation of the Heavens and Earth

We therefore have three levels of response to the appeal to the LXX future forms.

First, it is possible to understand θήσω and σκεπάσω as promises of restoration future to Isaiah while ἔστησα and ἐθεμελίωσα refer backward to an already-established covenantal heavens and earth. This was my initial explanation. It remains possible and, by itself, defeats the claim that the LXX places the creation of the heavens and earth in AD 70.

Second, and I believe better, the futures may be understood prospectively from within the historical Exodus narrative. Isaiah has transported the reader back to the Red Sea. From that historical viewpoint God “will” next bring Israel to Sinai, place His words before them, shelter them, and bring to realization the covenant relationship anticipated in Exodus 6:7. This reading preserves the unity of Isaiah 51:9–16 and harmonizes the LXX futures with the historical orientation of the Hebrew.

The presence of ἐρεῖ strengthens this interpretation because the prospective presentation extends into the covenant declaration itself. Exodus had promised, “I will take you to be My people”; Isaiah’s retrospective description culminates in the covenantal reality, “You are My people.” From the internal standpoint of the unfolding Exodus story, the covenant constitution is still ahead; from Isaiah’s standpoint, it is already history.

Third, even if someone rejects both explanations and insists that the LXX translator intended an absolute future from Isaiah’s own day, that would represent the Greek translator’s interpretation or recasting of the Hebrew rather than a grammatical requirement of the Hebrew text itself. Since Isaiah 51:16 is not quoted by a New Testament writer in a manner establishing these LXX futures as the inspired interpretation of the passage, the Hebrew text and its Exodus-Sinai context remain controlling.

The cumulative case is therefore stronger than any argument based upon one Greek verb. The Hebrew syntax, the explicit “days of old” and Red Sea context, the historical progression from Exodus to Sinai, the giving and reception of God’s covenant words, the movement from “I will take you to be My people” to “You are My people,” the ancient Jewish understanding of the cosmic language in national, congregational, and Torah-related categories, Martin’s own earlier recognition that Israel became God’s “new creation” at the Exodus, and even the LXX’s own aorists for establishing and founding all converge upon an antecedent Mosaic covenantal creation rather than the first creation of a covenantal heavens and earth in AD 70.

Thus, every route fails to establish the claim that Isaiah 51:16 predicts the original creation of a covenantal “heavens and earth” in AD 70. The first reading promises future restoration on the basis of an already-existing covenantal creation. The second and preferable reading places the entire sequence within the historical Exodus-Sinai event. And the third recognizes that an interpretive Greek rendering cannot overturn the Hebrew text from which it was translated.

The second reading provides the greatest exegetical coherence because it allows the entire passage to remain unified:

God defeated Egypt → divided the sea → redeemed Israel → brought them to Sinai → placed His words in their mouth → covered them under His protective hand → constituted them as His covenantal heavens and earth → and declared to Zion, “You are My people.”

Rather than dividing Isaiah 51:16 between a past creation and a future restoration, this reading understands the LXX futures prospectively from within Isaiah’s poetic recollection of the Exodus. The Greek futures do not cease being futures; they are futures from the standpoint of the historical scene Isaiah has recalled. From that point in the story, Sinai lies ahead. From Isaiah’s historical standpoint, the entire sequence lies centuries behind him.

And this brings us back to the larger theological problem for Covenant Creationism. If Isaiah 51:15–16 establishes the Mosaic covenantal heavens and earth at Exodus-Sinai, then the covenantal world that later grows old, is shaken, and passes away need not—and should not—be pushed backward into Genesis 1. The Old Covenant world has already been historically located. It was constituted through the Exodus, the giving of God’s words at Sinai, and God’s declaration to Israel, “You are My people.”

Martin’s former interpretation recognized exactly that Exodus-Sinai creation. His present system cannot comfortably retain it. He says the LXX compelled the change. I do not believe that explanation withstands examination, but we have nevertheless dealt with his stated argument directly. Neither the Greek futures themselves, the Greek aorists that accompany them, the Hebrew text, nor the controlling Exodus context requires abandoning his former interpretation.

The covenantal sequence therefore remains:

Mosaic heavens and earth established at Exodus-Sinai → Mosaic heavens and earth grow old and pass away → New Covenant heavens and earth established in Christ.

If that sequence is correct, then Isaiah 51:15–16 does more than undermine an appeal to the LXX futures. It removes the exegetical necessity upon which Covenant Creationism depends for turning Genesis 1 into the creation of the Mosaic/Old Covenant world in the first place.

Response to the “Prophetic Perfect” Argument

Tim suggests that the completed verbal forms in Isaiah 51:16 should be understood as “prophetic perfects”—that is, as describing a still-future event as though it had already been accomplished because its fulfillment was certain. On this reading, “I have put My words in your mouth” and “I have covered you in the shadow of My hand” would actually point forward from Isaiah’s day to a first-century New Covenant creation or Second Exodus.

The existence of the so-called prophetic perfect as a Hebrew phenomenon is not in dispute. Hebrew perfect forms can, in appropriate prophetic contexts, describe events that remain future from the prophet’s historical standpoint. The question, however, is not whether such a usage is possible, but whether the immediate context gives us any reason to interpret these particular verbs that way. It does not. On the contrary, Isaiah has explicitly transported his audience backward into Israel’s redemptive history.

Isaiah appeals to what God accomplished “in the days of old, the generations of long ago” (v. 9). He recalls Rahab and the dragon, the drying of the sea, the depths becoming a way, and the redeemed passing through (vv. 9–10). These are not prophetic-perfect descriptions of events still future to Isaiah. They are poetic recollections of the historical Exodus. Verse 15 again identifies YHWH through His sovereign mastery over the sea, returning the reader to the same Exodus imagery immediately before verse 16.

Thus, when God declares, “I have put My words in your mouth, and I have covered you in the shadow of My hand,” the natural historical progression is from the Red Sea to Sinai. After redeeming Israel from Egypt and bringing His people through the sea, God brought them to the mountain, placed His covenant words before them, and constituted them as His covenant nation. Israel then received those words and confessed them with its own mouth:

“All that the LORD has spoken we will do” (Exod. 19:8).

At the formal ratification of the covenant, the same theme appears twice more:

“All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do” (Exod. 24:3).

And after Moses read “the Book of the Covenant”:

“All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient” (Exod. 24:7).

This makes the language of Isaiah 51:16—God placing His words in Israel’s mouth—particularly appropriate to the Sinai covenant. It also fits the covenantal progression already announced before the Exodus. God had promised:

“I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God” (Exod. 6:7).

Isaiah 51:16 culminates with the corresponding covenant declaration:

“You are My people.”

The movement is therefore entirely coherent: “I will take you to be My people” → Exodus redemption → Red Sea crossing → God’s words given and confessed at Sinai → covenant ratification → “You are My people.”

The three infinitival expressions in Isaiah 51:16—“to plant the heavens,” “to found the earth,” and “to say to Zion, ‘You are My people’”—do not possess an independent future tense requiring them to be relocated centuries beyond Isaiah. Their temporal orientation must be determined by the actions to which they are attached and by the surrounding discourse. And that discourse has explicitly directed us to “the days of old” and the historical Exodus.

This places the burden of proof squarely upon the prophetic-perfect interpretation. It is not enough to demonstrate that a Hebrew perfect can sometimes refer to a future event. Martin must demonstrate why these particular completed forms should be interpreted that way when Isaiah has explicitly introduced “the days of old,” recalled Egypt’s defeat and the Red Sea deliverance, and then moved naturally into the covenantal formation of Israel. Grammatical possibility is not contextual demonstration.

Nor does Isaiah’s use of the first Exodus as a pattern for a coming “Second Exodus” require us to turn the historical actions of verses 9–16 into predictions themselves. In fact, Isaiah’s argument depends upon maintaining the distinction between past redemptive precedent and promised future redemption. The historical Exodus becomes the pattern and guarantee of the greater deliverance being promised to afflicted Zion. The logic is not: God will someday perform the Exodus-Sinai creation that Isaiah describes as though it had already occurred. Rather, it is: the God who already defeated Israel’s enemy, divided the sea, redeemed His people, protected them, gave them His covenant words, and constituted them as His people can and will act again in redemption.

The first Exodus can function as the type and guarantee of the coming redemption precisely because it is already history.

This distinction is especially important because Tim himself formerly recognized it. In Beyond Creation Science, Tim Martin and Jeff Vaughn explicitly interpreted Isaiah 51:15–16 this way:

“Isaiah [in Isa. 51:15–16] uses prophetic poetry to recount the crossing of the Red Sea as Israel left Egypt. God placed his words in Israel’s mouth at Sinai with the giving of the Law. Yet notice how the prophet alleges to Israel’s history as a creation of ‘heaven and earth.’ Israel became God’s new creation at the time of the Exodus.”

Martin’s former interpretation therefore recognized exactly what the immediate context indicates: Red Sea → Sinai → giving of the Law → Israel constituted as a new “heaven and earth.” His present prophetic-perfect interpretation must explain why that contextual reading, which he once explicitly defended, should now be abandoned.

There is also an important tension between Martin’s treatment of the Hebrew and his appeal to the Septuagint. In the Hebrew, he asks us to take completed forms and understand them prospectively as events still future from Isaiah’s historical standpoint. Yet in the LXX, the futures θήσω (“I will put”), σκεπάσω (“I will shelter”), and ἐρεῖ (“he will say”) are treated as though they must be absolute futures from Isaiah’s historical standpoint.

But verbal form cannot be allowed to override discourse perspective in one direction while discourse perspective is invoked to override verbal form in the other.

If context can establish that a Hebrew perfect describes something future despite its completed presentation, then context must likewise be allowed to determine the temporal vantage point from which the LXX futures are expressed. As demonstrated above, the Greek futures can be understood prospectively from within the historical Exodus narrative. Isaiah has transported the reader to the Red Sea. From that point in the story, Sinai is still ahead: God will place His words before Israel, will shelter His people, and will bring to realization the covenant relationship anticipated in Exodus 6:7. From Isaiah’s own historical standpoint, however, all of these events had occurred centuries earlier.

This does not mean that a Greek future somehow “means past.” It remains future relative to the historical vantage point within the story. Likewise, the question concerning the Hebrew perfect cannot be answered simply by attaching the label “prophetic perfect.” In both cases, context and discourse perspective must determine the temporal relationship of the verbs to the events being described.

The ancient interpretive evidence also favors the covenantal character of the passage. John Owen understood Isaiah 51:16 in connection with God’s dividing the sea, giving Israel the Law, and forming His people into “a congregation of believers and a civil state.” The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge similarly understands the heavens and earth in terms of Israel’s covenantal and political constitution. Targum Jonathan paraphrases the cosmic imagery in terms of raising up the nation and establishing the congregation, while the rabbinic discussion in Sanhedrin 99b associates God’s “words” with Torah and with the planting and founding of heaven and earth. These sources do not independently prove the Sinai identification, but they corroborate the national, covenantal, and Torah-related character that Isaiah’s Exodus context itself supplies.

Therefore, the issue cannot be settled simply by labeling the verbs “prophetic perfects.” Possible is not the same as probable, and grammatical possibility is not contextual demonstration. The immediate literary movement is considerably more straightforward:

“Days of old” → Egypt/Rahab defeated → Red Sea divided → redeemed pass through → God’s protective hand → His covenant words given to Israel → heavens and earth planted/founded → “You are My people.”

That is the first Exodus and the Exodus-Sinai constitution of Israel. Isaiah then employs that accomplished redemptive history as the pattern and assurance of the greater deliverance he promises.

The prophetic future in Isaiah 51 is real. But it is a future redemption patterned after an already-accomplished Exodus-Sinai creation; it is not a reason to transform that historical creation itself into a prophetic future. Martin’s former interpretation recognized this distinction. The immediate context still supports it, and merely invoking the category of “prophetic perfect” does not provide sufficient exegetical grounds for abandoning it.

Response to Tim on Deuteronomy 32

Tim seems to think me not addressing verses 10-11 in my book on Deuteronomy 32 somehow suggests his view is correct. He also wanted to know why I didn’t title the book, “Adam to Messiah.” Maybe we should also change the song from the “Song of Moses” to the “Song of Adam”? He appeals to Deuteronomy 32:10-11 (“He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings”) which actually strengthens the Sinai reading rather than undermining it. Moses himself looks back to the Exodus/wilderness period and deliberately uses Genesis 1 creation language to describe how God “found,” “led,” and “formed” Israel as His people en route to Sinai. Again, the echoes: the “waste howling wilderness” (tohu) directly parallels the “without form and void” (tohu wabohu) of Genesis 1:2, and the eagle “hovering” (rachaph) over its young mirrors the Spirit of God “hovering” (rachaph) over the waters in Genesis 1:2. Tim cites Chilton for the Genesis connections and yet Chilton was clearly not a Covenant Creationist or came to Tim’s conclusions of Genesis 1-2 as the “first” “old covenant” creation.

Moses does not stop there. Throughout Deuteronomy 32 he repeatedly applies explicit creation language to the very Exodus events that produced the covenant people: “Is not he thy father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee [LXX “created” or “formed” thee], and established thee?” (Deut 32:6); “the LORD… made thee to ride on the high places” (v. 13); “he forsook God which made him” (v. 15); “the Rock that begat thee… the God that formed thee” (v. 18). Deuteronomy 32 therefore follows exactly the same pattern as Isaiah 51. Moses recounts the chaos of Egypt and the wilderness (parallel to Rahab/dragon), applies creative “hovering,” making, forming, and establishing language to the historical Exodus/Sinai deliverance, and then uses that past “creation” of Israel as the basis for present and future exhortation just as Isaiah does.

Again, Isaiah 51 grounds Zion’s comfort and coming greater salvation in what God already did at the first Exodus/Sinai (planting the heavens and founding the earth, then declaring “You are My people”), Moses in Deuteronomy 32 wants future generations to look back to that same deliverance and “creation” of Israel at Sinai. He does so as a source of hope that God will again act in vengeance to vindicate and save His children when persecutors rise from within their own heavens and earth against them in Israel’s last days. Moses explicitly points to the “appointed time” (Hebrew eth; LXX kairos in Deut 32:35) when God will arise: “Vengeance is mine, and recompense… for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that are to come hasten upon them” (Deut 32:35). The song moves from recounting God’s past formation of Israel (creation language applied to Exodus/Sinai) to future judgment on persecutors and vindication of God’s people. This is the identical pattern and exhortation we see in Isaiah 51: look back to the Sinai creation of the covenant people as the guarantee that God will judge the persecutors and bring greater salvation when the appointed time arrives. Far from contradicting the Sinai reading of Isaiah 51, Deuteronomy 32 beautifully confirms it.

The immediate Exodus context (vv. 9–10—Rahab = Egypt, dragon = Pharaoh), the seamless flow through vv. 11–14, the perfect-tense main verbs + purpose infinitives in Hebrew (including the Sinai covenant formula in Exod 6:7; 19:5–6; Deut 26:17–18), Isaiah 51:2’s own reminder that God started with Abraham and Sarah as “but one” before multiplying them into the covenant nation, the transient “heavens and earth” and persecutors of vv. 6–8 (the passing Old Covenant order established at Sinai, typified by old-covenant opposition), the coming eternal salvation of vv. 3–5 (the greater Exodus/restoration), the detailed parallel in Deuteronomy 32 (creation language applied to the Exodus formation of Israel as the basis for future hope and vindication at the appointed time), the LXX’s relative clause with aorists keeping the founding in the past, the Targum’s covenantal reading, Owen’s, the Treasury’s, and a host of other partial and full preterist exegesis, and the rejection of a “prophetic past” reading in light of the chapter’s grammar and context all converge on one clear conclusion: Isaiah 51:15-16 refers to God’s Sinai creation of the Old Covenant heavens and earth—when He formed Israel as His covenant people out of Egyptian chaos. The grammar and context simply do not support detaching this into a separate, future AD 70 new creation disconnected from that redemptive-historical root. Zion’s comfort is rooted in the Mosaic old covenant first Exodus as the pattern for the greater one.

For some reason, Tim has painted himself into a corner by insisting there can be only one “Old Covenant heavens and earth,” which he limits exclusively to Genesis 1–2. This approach is reminiscent of Ed Stevens, who painted himself into a similar corner by interpreting Jesus’ statement that the one who believes in Him “shall never die” (John 11:26) as requiring a physical “rapture” or removal of living believers in AD 70.

Both positions are seriously misguided. Because each man sees himself as the founder of a particular movement, neither seems willing to reconsider these texts in light of clear biblical context and common sense.

Revelation 21 and the Meaning of the “First” Heavens and Earth

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21:1–2).

As pointed out earlier in this article, Tim Martin once correctly understood the passing away of the heavens and earth in 2 Peter 3 against the background of the Mosaic covenantal creation described in Isaiah 51:15–16. Martin and Jeff Vaughn explicitly identified Isaiah’s creation language with Israel’s formation at the Exodus and Sinai, stating that “God placed his words in Israel’s mouth at Sinai with the giving of the Law” and that “Israel became God’s new creation at the time of the Exodus.” This former interpretation becomes particularly significant when compared with what Martin writes in the same book concerning Revelation 21:1:

“It is only natural to assume that Peter promised the same new heaven and earth we see in Revelation. Why would we assume John refers to anything other than what Jesus and Peter promised when John writes of a ‘new heaven and new earth’ (Rev. 21:1)?” (Martin, Ibid., 230).

On this point we agree. But Martin’s own argument produces an important consequence that should be followed consistently. If the new heavens and earth are the same in 2 Peter 3 and Revelation 21, then the old heavens and earth that give way to them should likewise be the same covenantal creation. Peter describes the old heavens and earth passing away and being replaced by new heavens and a new earth; John describes the “first heaven and first earth” passing away and being replaced by a new heaven and new earth. If Martin’s earlier interpretation was correct that Peter’s de-creation imagery concerns the Mosaic heavens and earth established at Exodus-Sinai in Isaiah 51:15–16, then Revelation’s “first heaven and first earth” should be understood within that same covenantal framework. One cannot insist upon the identity of Peter’s and John’s new creation while changing the identity of the old creation that gives way to it without providing compelling exegetical justification.

This conclusion becomes even stronger when we identify the prophetic passage controlling John’s vision. Revelation 21:1–4 does not merely repeat the words “heaven and earth.” John combines the new heavens and earth with Jerusalem, rejoicing, and the removal of sorrow and weeping. This is precisely the complex of ideas found in Isaiah 65:17–19: “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress.”

The correspondence is unmistakable. Isaiah announces “new heavens and a new earth” (Isa. 65:17), while John sees “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21:1). Isaiah creates Jerusalem for rejoicing (Isa. 65:18), while John sees the New Jerusalem descending from God (Rev. 21:2). Isaiah promises that weeping will no longer be heard there (Isa. 65:19), while John announces that God will wipe away every tear (Rev. 21:4). Genesis creation vocabulary naturally stands in the larger biblical background, but Isaiah 65 supplies the immediate prophetic framework through which John presents the new creation. We should therefore interpret John’s contrast through Isaiah before simply assuming that the adjective “first” automatically identifies Genesis 1:1 as the covenantal world passing away.

Isaiah 65:17 also declares that “the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.” Within Isaiah’s prophetic contrast, the former order of judgment gives way to a new order of covenantal blessing centered upon Jerusalem and God’s people. Revelation presents the same transition. Earth and heaven flee from God’s presence in Revelation 20:11; the “first heaven and first earth” have passed away in Revelation 21:1; and immediately the New Jerusalem appears in verse 2. Yet John adds another dimension that is crucial for identifying these two worlds: the transition is expressed not only in creation language, but also in the language of covenantal marriage.

John sees “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21:2). A few verses later the angel makes the identification explicit: “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb” (Rev. 21:9). This raises a decisive question for the Covenant Creationism interpretation: Where was Israel’s first covenantal marriage established? The answer is not Genesis 1, but the Exodus-Sinai covenant.

Jeremiah explicitly identifies that covenant as a marriage when contrasting it with the promised New Covenant: “not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD” (Jer. 31:32). Jeremiah could hardly locate the marriage covenant more clearly. It is the covenant associated with God bringing Israel out of Egypt and constituting her as His covenant people.

This is where Martin’s former and present interpretations become especially important. Martin continues to recognize Exodus 19–24 and Sinai as the setting of God’s marriage to Israel. Yet, as demonstrated earlier, Martin formerly recognized that this same Exodus-Sinai event was the formation of Israel’s covenantal “heavens and earth” in Isaiah 51:15–16. These two realities should not be separated as though they belonged to different covenantal histories. They are complementary biblical metaphors describing the same covenant-constituting event. At Exodus-Sinai, God redeemed a people from Egypt, brought them to Himself, gave them His covenant words, entered into covenant with them, and constituted the ordered covenantal world in which He would dwell as their God and they would live as His people.

Jeremiah 31 and Isaiah 51 therefore converge upon the same historical event from two complementary perspectives. Jeremiah describes the Exodus, the covenant, and God’s resulting relationship to Israel as her husband. Isaiah describes the defeat of Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, God placing His words in Israel’s mouth, the planting of the heavens and founding of the earth, and the covenant declaration, “You are My people.” The marriage and the creation are not competing events. The marriage of Israel at Exodus-Sinai is the covenantal formation of Israel’s heavens and earth.

This creates a serious difficulty for Martin’s present Covenant Creationism position. He continues to place Israel’s marriage at Sinai, but he no longer wishes to place the creation of Israel’s covenantal heavens and earth there. Instead, his system requires the Old Covenant heavens and earth to reach all the way back to Genesis 1. But if Israel became God’s covenant wife at Sinai and, as Martin himself formerly taught, became God’s covenantal “heaven and earth” at that same Exodus-Sinai event, what exegetical basis is there for severing these two covenant-forming realities? The burden of proof rests upon the interpretation that separates what Scripture and Martin’s own former interpretation once joined together.

Revelation makes this problem even more acute because John reunites the marriage and creation motifs at the consummation. In Revelation 19:7 the announcement is made, “Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready.” Then, at the great white throne, “earth and sky fled away” from God’s presence (Rev. 20:11). Immediately afterward John sees “a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away” (Rev. 21:1), followed immediately by the appearance of the New Jerusalem “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (v. 2). Finally, the angel identifies this New Jerusalem as “the Bride, the wife of the Lamb” (v. 9).

The correspondence is difficult to miss. The passing of one covenantal heavens and earth and the appearance of another occur within the same marital transition. The biblical symmetry is therefore both simple and profound: the Old Covenant marriage corresponds to the Mosaic heavens and earth; covenant judgment and divorce correspond to the passing of those heavens and earth; and the New Covenant marriage corresponds to the new heavens and new earth.Revelation thus brings together at the consummation the same creation and marriage motifs that Scripture brings together at Sinai.

This is precisely why the adjective “first” in Revelation 21:1 cannot simply be assumed to mean the physical heavens and earth of Genesis 1:1. “First” does not mean “the first occurrence of these words in the Bible.” Its referent must be determined by John’s context and by the prophetic texts from which his imagery is drawn. John’s contrast is between the first heaven and earth and the new heaven and earth, between the former order and the New Jerusalem, between sorrow and the removal of sorrow, and between the former covenantal world and the Bride of the Lamb. Isaiah 65–66 supplies the immediate prophetic framework for this contrast, while Isaiah 51:15–16 supplies the covenantal creation of Israel at Exodus-Sinai.

The relationship can be summarized as follows:

Aspect	“First” Heaven & Earth (Rev. 21:1)	“New” Heaven & Earth (Rev. 21:1–2)	Prophetic Background
Covenantal identity	Mosaic/Old Covenant world	New Covenant world	Isa. 51:15–16; 65:17; 66:22
Creation	Heavens and earth planted/founded	New heavens and new earth	Isa. 51:16; 65:17
Covenant people	Mosaic Israel	New Covenant people	Isa. 51:16; 65:1ff.
Jerusalem	Old Covenant Jerusalem/order	New Jerusalem/Bride	Isa. 65:18–19
Marriage	Sinai marriage covenant	Bride/wife of the Lamb	Jer. 31:31–32; Rev. 21:2, 9
Judgment/transition	Passes away	Remains	Isa. 65:17; Rev. 21:1
Sorrow/weeping	Belongs to former order	Removed	Isa. 65:19; Rev. 21:4
Fulfillment	Mosaic world ends in AD 70	New Covenant creation consummated	Isa. 65–66; Rev. 21

Isaiah 65 itself reinforces this covenantal and redemptive setting. The chapter begins by contrasting rebellious Israel with those who had not formerly called upon God, language Paul explicitly applies to the Gentiles and Israel in Romans 10:20–21. The new-creation prophecy therefore arises within a larger discussion of covenant judgment and the formation of a people who will inherit God’s promises. Genesis 1 does not contain this particular complex of Jerusalem, covenant people, covenant judgment, marriage, and the removal of weeping. Genesis supplies the foundational creation vocabulary upon which later prophetic imagery can draw, but Isaiah supplies the immediate prophetic framework through which Revelation 21 employs that vocabulary.

Hebrews and the “First” Mosaic Covenant Order

There is also important New Testament precedent for using “first” to describe the Mosaic covenantal order. The entire argument of Hebrews is addressed to first-century Jewish Christians who were being warned against turning back to the Mosaic system. The author repeatedly contrasts the “first,” temporary arrangement with the superior New Covenant reality established through Christ. Hebrews 8:7 speaks explicitly of the “first covenant” and the necessity of a second, while Hebrews 8:13 declares that by announcing a New Covenant God made the first obsolete: “And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.”

The same terminology continues throughout Hebrews 9. The “first covenant” possessed regulations for worship and an earthly sanctuary (Heb. 9:1); the tabernacle contained a “first section” (v. 2) into which the priests continually entered (v. 6); redemption was required for transgressions committed under the “first covenant” (v. 15); and that “first covenant” had been inaugurated with blood (v. 18). Hebrews 10:9 summarizes the entire covenantal transition succinctly: “He does away with the first in order to establish the second.”

The cumulative contrast is unmistakable. Within Hebrews’ covenantal argument, “first” repeatedly designates the Mosaic covenant and its associated cultic arrangement in contrast with the superior New Covenant reality. This does not mean that the occurrence of prōtos (“first”) in Revelation 21:1, by itself, proves that John means the Mosaic covenant. It does demonstrate, however, that there is nothing linguistically or theologically unusual about “first” designating the former Mosaic order in contrast with the new.

More importantly, Hebrews describes that first Mosaic covenant as “becoming obsolete and growing old” and “ready to vanish away” (Heb. 8:13), while Revelation subsequently announces that the “first heaven and the first earth had passed away” (Rev. 21:1). Isaiah 51 supplies the conceptual bridge between these descriptions: the Mosaic covenant that Hebrews calls the “first” covenant is the covenantal order whose establishment Isaiah describes through the planting of the heavens and founding of the earth. Hebrews announces that this first covenantal order was ready to disappear; Revelation sees the first heavens and earth as having disappeared.

Hebrews 9 develops the same transition through the typology of the tabernacle. The Holy Spirit indicated that the way into the holy places had not yet been fully manifested while the first section retained its standing, an arrangement that the author identifies as symbolic for the then-present age and as imposed only “until the time of reformation” (Heb. 9:8–10). The tabernacle arrangement thus illustrates restricted access under the Mosaic order and the superior access secured through Christ.

This provides an important typological parallel to Revelation 21. When John sees the New Jerusalem, he describes the city as a perfect cube: “its length and width and height are equal” (Rev. 21:16). The cubic form naturally recalls the Most Holy Place (1 Kings 6:20), where God’s presence dwelt. Yet in the New Jerusalem there is no separate temple building, for “its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb” (Rev. 21:22). The entire city has become the dwelling place of God. What was typologically restricted to the Most Holy Place under the Mosaic order now characterizes the entire New Covenant city.

This also provides a meaningful connection with Revelation 11:1–2. John is instructed to measure the naos, the sanctuary or temple proper, together with the altar and worshipers, while the outer court is excluded and given to the nations to be trampled for forty-two months. We should not press naos by itself to mean exclusively the Most Holy Place, but the contrast between the measured sanctuary and the outer court given over to trampling fits Revelation’s larger movement from the judged Old Covenant order to God’s perfected dwelling with His people. By Revelation 21 the transition is complete. There is no outer court and no separate temple structure. The New Jerusalem itself possesses the cubic dimensions associated with the Most Holy Place, and God and the Lamb dwell immediately with their people.

Hebrews and Revelation therefore describe the same covenantal transition through complementary images. Hebrews moves from the first Mosaic arrangement, through its removal at the time of reformation, into unrestricted access to God’s presence. Revelation moves from the first heavens and earth, through their passing away, into the New Jerusalem as the perfected dwelling of God.

The Covenant Pattern Comes Together

The cumulative biblical pattern is remarkably coherent. At Exodus-Sinai, God married Israel, gave her His covenant words, and constituted her as His covenant people. Isaiah 51 describes that same historical complex through the planting of the heavens and founding of the earth. Martin formerly recognized this explicitly and continues to recognize Sinai as Israel’s covenantal marriage. At the other end of the Mosaic age, Hebrews describes that first covenant as obsolete, growing old, and ready to disappear. Revelation sees earth and heaven fleeing from God’s presence and then announces that the first heaven and first earth have passed away. What immediately replaces them is both a new creation and a new marriage: the new heavens and new earth appear together with the New Jerusalem, “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”

The symmetry should therefore not be broken. The first marriage corresponds to the Mosaic heavens and earth; the judicial termination of that covenant corresponds to the passing of the first heavens and earth; and the New Covenant marriage corresponds to the new heavens and new earth. This is precisely where Martin’s present Covenant Creationism interpretation encounters its greatest difficulty. He continues to place Israel’s marriage covenant at Sinai. He formerly placed the creation of Israel’s covenantal heavens and earth at Sinai. Revelation then joins marriage and creation together again when the former heavens and earth pass away and the New Jerusalem appears as the Bride. If marriage and covenantal creation belong together at Sinai, and new marriage and new creation belong together in Revelation 21, on what exegetical basis should the creation of the Old Covenant heavens and earth be separated from the Sinai marriage and pushed backward into Genesis 1?

Isaiah 51 gives us no reason to make that separation. On the contrary, its Exodus context, covenant words, creation imagery, and declaration “You are My people” give us every reason to keep them together. The more coherent covenantal sequence is therefore not Genesis 1 = Old Covenant creation → AD 70 de-creation → New Covenant creation, but rather Exodus-Sinai = Old Covenant marriage and Mosaic heavens and earth → covenant judgment and dissolution of that first covenantal world → New Covenant marriage and new heavens and earth.

Martin’s own earlier interpretation of Isaiah 51 supplies the first part of this sequence. His continuing identification of Sinai as Israel’s marriage reinforces it, while his insistence that Peter and John describe the same new heavens and earth supplies the connection to Revelation 21. Taken together, these points lead naturally to the conclusion that the “first heaven and first earth” of Revelation 21:1 are the Mosaic covenantal heavens and earth planted and founded at Exodus-Sinai in Isaiah 51:15–16—the covenantal world belonging to the first marriage. Its passing corresponds to the judicial termination of that marriage covenant, while the new heavens and new earth correspond to the New Covenant marriage of the Lamb and the New Jerusalem.

The covenantal symmetry can therefore be stated simply: marriage entails covenantal creation; the judicial dissolution of that marriage entails covenantal de-creation; and the New Covenant marriage brings the new creation.Revelation 21 places that pattern before us by joining the passing of the first heavens and earth directly to the appearance of the New Jerusalem as the Bride. Martin’s former interpretation of Isaiah 51 recognized the Mosaic beginning of that covenantal creation, and his continuing identification of Sinai as Israel’s marriage gives us no exegetical reason to separate what Scripture.

The Exodus, No More Sea, and Temple Typology

Outer Court → Deliverance from Chaos (The Red Sea Moment)

Laver = Red Sea

The priests had to wash in the laver before approaching the altar or Holy Place. This corresponds to Israel passing through the waters of the Red Sea—a baptismal deliverance from Egyptian bondage (1 Cor. 10:1-2). This is not just “crossing water.” It is God slaying the dragon (Rahab = Egypt/Pharaoh) and drying up the sea: “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord… Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep…?” (Isaiah 51:9-10). God defeats the chaotic waters and the sea-dragon, then brings His people safely through on dry ground. This is the moment He creates Israel as His covenant “heavens and earth” people (Isa. 51:9-16).

Altar → Sinai Covenant & Passover Sacrifice

Altar of Burnt Offering = Mount Sinai + Passover

Blood is shed. The covenant is ratified. The people are set apart. This is the legal and sacrificial foundation that follows the sea crossing.

Peter Leithart has shown that every Levitical sacrifice itself recapitulates the entire Exodus-to-Sinai sequence, so that the altar is not merely the place of Sinai but the living reenactment of Passover, sea crossing, ascent, and covenant meal (Peter J. Leithart, Ministerial Conference Outline #1, September 15, 2004). Israel’s original covenant-making passed through stages marked by sacrifice: the Passover lamb slaughtered and its blood applied to the doorposts (Exod. 12); the passage through the Sea of Reeds (Exod. 14); cleansing and consecration at Sinai (Exod. 19); the people’s oath and the offering of ascension (“burnt”) offerings and peace offerings (Exod. 24:3-8); and finally the meal of Moses, Aaron, his sons, and the elders in Yahweh’s presence on the mountain (Exod. 24:9-11).

• The ritual of the ascension offering (ʿolah) in Leviticus 1 mirrors this history step by step:
• The worshiper brings the animal to the doorway of the tent (corresponding to the setting apart of the Passover lamb).
• He lays his hand on its head, designating it as representative and substitute.
• He slaughters it (Passover slaughter).
• The priest dashes the blood on the altar (blood on the doorposts).
• The fire is kindled so that the altar becomes a miniature Sinai crowned with flame and cloud.
• Portions of the animal are washed (the baptismal passage through the sea).
• The washed pieces are placed on the fire and ascend as smoke (Moses ascending into the cloud as Israel’s representative).

Thus every ascension offering reenacts the whole story: Passover deliverance, sea crossing, and ascent into God’s presence. The peace offering follows a parallel path and ends with the distribution of the flesh for a shared meal—exactly the Sinai meal of Exodus 24. Sequences that combine purification offering, ascension offering, and peace offering (as in the ordination of Aaron, Lev. 8, or the completion of a Nazirite vow, Num. 6) make the same pattern explicit: cleansing that opens a way, ascent into the divine presence, and joyful feasting before the Lord. In short, whenever an Israelite approached the altar he was re-living Israel’s foundational exodus and covenant-making. The high priest’s later movement through the courts therefore does not stand alone; it is the climactic form of a sacrificial liturgy that already rehearses the Exodus every day.

Holy Place (the 40-cubit journey) → Wilderness Wandering

The High Priest’s movement through the Holy Place (with its lampstand, table of showbread, and altar of incense) represents the 40 years in the wilderness. The furnishings sustain the people: light, bread, prayer / incense. This is the long journey of testing and dependence after deliverance but before full inheritance—the same period of testing that follows the sea crossing and the Sinai covenant meal.

The Holy Place itself measured 40 cubits in length (20 cubits for the outer sanctuary in the Tabernacle, expanded in the Temple), so the high priest’s approach to the veil was literally a 40-cubit journey—mirroring Israel’s 40-year wilderness trek.

Most Holy Place → Promised Land / Eden Restored

Passing through the veil into the Most Holy Place = entering the Promised Land.

The land itself is portrayed in Scripture as a return to Eden (garden imagery, fruitfulness, God’s presence dwelling with His people). Joel 2 and other restoration passages echo this Edenic renewal. In sacrificial terms, this final entry corresponds to the completed ascent and the meal in God’s presence—the goal toward which every offering pointed and which Jesus finally achieved by His own Passover death, His crossing from death to life, and His ascent to the Father’s right hand. This typology reaches its historical fulfillment in the Church. Just as Israel wandered 40 years before entering the land, and just as the high priest traversed 40 cubits before entering the Most Holy Place (God’s immediate presence, the restored Eden), so it took roughly 40 years—from AD 30 (the cross, resurrection, and ascension) to AD 70 (the destruction of the old Temple order)—to bring the Church fully into the Most Holy Place presence of God. Revelation 21:16 presents the New Jerusalem as a perfect cube, the architectural form of the Most Holy Place now expanded to encompass the entire people of God. The “former” heavens and earth of the Exodus order have passed away, and the Church has entered the true Promised Land / Edenic rest.

The Overarching Layer: Exodus as New Creation (“Heavens and Earth”)

At the Red Sea, God doesn’t just rescue slaves—He creates a new people and a new order: “I am the Lord thy God, that divided the sea… And I have put my words in thy mouth… that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people.” (Isaiah 51:15-16). The Exodus is Israel’s creation event. It establishes a new “heavens and earth”—a new covenant cosmos centered on God’s presence with His people, with the Tabernacle/Temple as its portable/microcosmic center. Therefore, when Isaiah later says: “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered…” (Isaiah 65:17) …the “former” heavens and earth he has in view is precisely the one established at the Exodus (the order described in Isaiah 51:15-16). John picks this up directly in Revelation 21:1: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.” Jesus’ sacrifice is the definitive new Exodus. As Leithart notes, to call His work “sacrificial” is to say far more than that He died for sins; it embraces His resurrection, ascension, the gift of the Spirit, and the eucharistic meal. He has passed through the ultimate Red Sea, ascended the true Sinai, and opened the true Most Holy Place so that the former sea-threatened cosmos may pass away and there be “no more sea.” The 40-year period from AD 30 to AD 70 is the Church’s wilderness sojourn that ends in full entrance into that new Promised Land / Eden presence with God.

Why “No More Sea” Matters in This Typology

The disappearance of the sea in Revelation 21 is not random. It completes the typology: The sea at the Exodus represented the threat of chaos, death, the dragon, and separation.  God describes the judgment of Babylon in Jeremiah 51:36 as, “I will dry up her sea and make her fountain dry.”  In the book of Revelation old covenant Jerusalem is the “Great City” that is both the new threat of “Egypt” and “Babylon” coming against the righteous remnant – the Church.  The book of Revelation is descriptive of the second exodus and thus old covenant Jerusalem will have her persecuting “power” “completely shattered” in the events of AD 66-70 (Dan. 12:7; Rev. 11:1-8).

God overcame it once at the Red Sea (laver moment). In the final new creation, that chaotic sea is gone forever. There is no longer any threat or barrier, any dragon, any death-dealing waters between God and His people.

The entire temple journey (sea → altar → wilderness → Most Holy) reaches its goal: unveiled, face-to-face dwelling with God in a renewed Eden (Rev 21:3, 22; 22:1-5). The river of life replaces the laver/sea.

The Sea, Sheol, Jordan, and the Abolition of Death’s Barrier (Revelation 20–21)

In the grand climax of the Apocalypse, John sees the final judgment unfold: “The sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one according to what they had done” (Revelation 20:13). Immediately afterward, in the vision of the new creation, John declares: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no more sea” (Revelation 21:1).

This sequence is not accidental. The sea — that ancient symbol of chaos, the dragon’s domain, and the watery gateway to the underworld — functions as a multifaceted emblem throughout Scripture. As we have seen in the Exodus typology and the temple diagram, the Red Sea / laver represents passage through the realm of death and chaos. God slays the dragon (Rahab/Egypt), dries the sea, and creates a new people and a new order (“plant the heavens and lay the foundations of the earth,” Isaiah 51:15-16). The sea is both threat and boundary: it threatens to swallow the living and holds the dead in its depths.

Scripture completes this with a second water crossing — the Jordan River. After the wilderness wandering (the Holy Place journey in the temple), Joshua leads the new generation through the flooded Jordan on dry ground into the Promised Land (Joshua 3–4). If the Red Sea is deliverance from bondage and death, the Jordan is the final removal of separation from inheritance — rest, fruitfulness, and dwelling with God in the land (an Eden-like reality). Together, these two crossings re-enact the full drama that the temple symbolically compresses: outer court (Red Sea/laver deliverance) → altar & Holy Place (Sinai + 40 years/cubits of wilderness) → Most Holy Place / Promised Land (Jordan entry into full inheritance).

Ancient Israelite understanding reinforced the depth of these images. The sea’s depths (and by extension such rivers) were poetically identified with Sheol, the realm of the dead (Jonah 2:2-6 equates descending into the sea with entering “the belly of Sheol” and “the Pit”). The chaotic waters embodied the curse of spiritual death that entered through Adam — a curse that continued to separate the soul from God’s full presence even in the realm of the dead, holding the righteous in hopeful anticipation until Christ’s Parousia, the judgment, and the resurrection of the dead at the end of the old covenant age in AD 70. The temple’s own structure echoed this progression — one had to pass the laver (the sea), the altar (sacrifice), and the inner chambers before approaching God’s holiness.

Hebrews 12:26-28 ties this directly to the shaking and removal of the old order: “At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, ‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.’ This phrase, ‘Yet once more,’ indicates the removal of things that are shaken — that is, things that have been made — in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken…” The old “heavens and earth” (the covenant order established at the Exodus, with its sea, its Jordan, its temporary temple, and its vulnerability to shaking) is being shaken and removed. This includes the chaotic “sea” powers — Gentile beasts and empires that rise from the waters to oppress God’s people (Daniel 7; Revelation 13). The old earthly kingdom/system was subject to such shaking; the new kingdom the Church receives is spiritual and unshakeable.

Israel’s covenant “heavens and earth” magnified the sin and death that came through Adam (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, 45-49; Romans 5:20). The law, the temple system, and the old order intensified awareness of sin and the power of death rather than removing the curse. When this old covenant system passed away in AD 70 — not the original creation of Genesis 1:1 — the curse of Adamic death became “no more” for God’s people in a profound covenantal sense. The barrier of the old order was dismantled, and the full benefits of Christ’s victory over sin and death became reality for the Church.

Revelation brings this typology to its eschatological fulfillment. At the final judgment, the sea surrenders its dead (Rev 20:13). Then the sea itself — and every remaining barrier it represents — is abolished. In the new heaven and new earth: The realm of the dead (Sheol/Hades as a holding place) is emptied and eliminated.

The spiritual curse of Adamic death — that which separated humanity from God’s presence and held people in bondage to fear and spiritual decay of the soul (Hebrews 2:14-15; Romans 5:12-21; 8:19-23) — no longer threatens God’s redeemed people.

The barrier is gone. There is no more chaotic sea, no more separating Jordan, no more watery grave or waiting place, no more dragon-infested deep, no more shaking Gentile sea-beasts, and no more veil-like obstruction between God’s people who have eternal life and “never die” and the holy presence of God.

This perfectly consummates the temple/Exodus progression in the typology. The High Priest’s journey through the Holy Place (wilderness) into the Most Holy Place (Promised Land/Eden) was always a foreshadowing. Christ, the true High Priest, Passover Lamb, and greater Joshua, has already passed through both the ultimate sea of death (His baptism, cross, and descent) and the Jordan of inheritance, entering the true Most Holy Place (heaven itself, Hebrews 9–10). Believers, baptized into His death and resurrection (through faith not water – our Red Sea and Jordan moment, 1 Corinthians 10:1-2; Romans 6; Colossians 2:11-13), now inherit a secure unshakeable Kingdom / Promised Land / Eden.

In the new creation, the entire typology reaches its goal: full, unveiled access to God’s presence with no remaining barrier (Revelation 21:3-4, 22; 22:1-5). The river of the water of life flows freely from the throne (replacing the old laver/sea and every separating water), the tree of life stands accessible, and “night” (another death/Sheol image) is gone. The former “heavens and earth” established at the Exodus — with its sea, its Jordan, its temporary covenants, and its death-shadow — has passed away (Isaiah 51:9-16; 65:17; Revelation 21:1). The curse is reversed. Death is swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54-57).

Thus, “no more sea” communicates far more than the absence of literal oceans (per the Futurist view). It declares the permanent defeat of the underworld’s power, the end of death’s dominion as a separator, the removal of every water barrier (Red Sea or Jordan), the end of shaking by Gentile sea-beasts, and the total elimination of every obstacle between God and His people. The Red Sea crossing that began the old creation or “heavens and earth” of Israel (Isiah 51:9-16; 65:17-19 has become, in Christ, the gateway to the eternal new creation where the threat of the sea — and all it represented — is no more.

The New Heavens and New Earth = The Wedding — Sinks Tim Martin and CC’s Battleship

In our Revelation study I specifically brought the following material up in order to refute Martin’s CC view. Then recently Don Preston challenged Tim Martin with this concept in a Q&A period and Tim just did not address the challenge and offered a very long distraction about the betrothal period. Let me make my exegetical argument again here.

Much of Jewish and Christian scholarship agree that the time when God married Israel was in the events of the exodus event and the covenant being ratified at Sinai (Ex. 19-24). But as this article has demonstrated, this is also the time when God created Israel as His “heavens and earth” (Isa. 51:9-16). Like the book of Hebrews, Revelation is a tale of the two covenants—the “first” Mosaic old covenant and new or second established in the blood of Christ. Revelation tells this story from the perspective of two cities, two wives, and two heavens and earths. When the first covenant wife / harlot is judged and divorced in AD 70 is when the new is married (Rev. 17-21). Thus, the time of the first wedding was the time of the creation of the first heavens and earth established in Exodus 19-24. The time of her divorce is the time of her heavens and earth passing away in AD 70. Again, this is NOT the passing away of the heavens and earth of Genesis 1:1 that is in view!

Israel’s Mosaic old covenant system or heavens and earth and law magnified the spiritual “the death” that came through Adam the very day he sinned. But in the new covenant Jerusalem or heavens and earth its curse is “no more” (Rev. 21:1-4). Tim Martin and CC perform eisegesis and an illogical leap when it concludes that the “heavens and earth” that pass away in Revelation 21:1 is the Genesis 1:1 just because there is Genesis 2-3 events listed in Revelation 21-22.

This article has exegetically proven that the futurist and Tim Martin’s CC view that the “heavens and earth” of Psalm 102:25-28; Hebrews 1:10-12; and Revelation 21:1 is the “heavens and earth” of Genesis 1:1 is categorically false. It has been demonstrated that it is the “heavens” and “earth” that was created at the exodus event and ratified at Sinai (Ex. 19-24; Isa. 51:15-16; Deut. 32:6). This is also when the marriage took place.

Tim made some comments on my Deuteronomy 32 book recently at a conference which I have addressed here. He oddly thinks the “last days” of old covenant Israel mentioned in Genesis 49:1ff. has to refer to the last days of the “heavens and earth” of Genesis 1:1. Why? Well, because he found a futurist who makes that connection – ugh. Hey Tim, Ed Stevens has found a lot of futurists that agree with him that the “rapture” of 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 is physical. So what. Since Ed Stevens and Tim Martin feel they are pioneers and founders of a major theological movement they simply won’t listen to reason or exegesis. I’ve just surrendered myself to that reality at this point. They will continue to double down on foolishness. No, 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 is not teaching a physical rapture of bodies flying off the planet and no, the heavens and earth of Psalm 102:25-27; Hebrews 1:10-12; and Revelation 21:1 is not the heavens and earth of Genesis 1:1. I see both of these movements as error and causing confusion and division within the preterist movement.

Other Concerning Issues

Tim Martin and Covenant Creation (CC) began by teaching that while they do not believe Genesis 1–2 addresses the creation or origin of the physical universe, they still affirmed that the Bible attributes the creation of the universe to God and that He sustains it by His power. Over time, however, some in this camp have moved to the position that there is no reference in Scripture to “heaven(s)” or “earth” that addresses the physical universe or its creation at all. Tim himself once agreed that the book of Job provides clear evidence of God’s power in creating and sustaining the physical universe — a position he now appears to deny.This shift is difficult to reconcile with the plain testimony of Scripture. The book of Job repeatedly portrays God as the sovereign Creator and Sustainer of the physical cosmos in majestic, unmistakable terms. For example:

Job 9:8-9 — “He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea. He is the Maker of the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the constellations of the south.”

Job 26:7 — “He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing.”

Job 26:10-14 — “He marks out the horizon on the face of the waters… By His breath the skies became fair; His hand pierced the gliding serpent. And these are but the outer fringe of His works; how faint the whisper we hear of Him!”

Job 28:24-26 — “For He looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens… When He established the force of the wind and measured out the waters… He looked at wisdom and appraised it.”

Job 37:5-6, 10-12 (Elihu) — “God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; He does great things beyond our understanding. He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’ and to the rain shower, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’ … The breath of God produces ice, and the broad waters become frozen. He loads the clouds with moisture; He spreads His lightning through them… He brings the clouds to do whatever He commands them over the face of the whole earth.”

Job 38:4-7, 31-33 (God Himself speaking) — “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell Me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? … On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone—while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? … Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orion’s belt? … Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?”

These passages (and many others in Job) explicitly describe God creating the physical heavens, earth, stars, weather systems, and sustaining them by His sovereign power and care. They portray a universe that is ordered, beautiful, and dependent on the Creator’s ongoing providence — not merely a symbolic or covenantal construct.

The denial that Scripture speaks to the physical creation and sustenance of the universe goes far beyond a debate over Genesis 1–2. It requires setting aside the clear witness of Job and the Psalms. This trajectory leads to unnecessary and extreme conclusions that weaken rather than strengthen a high view of Scripture.

In attempting to refute Zionism, I’ve noticed Tim has become a Zionist himself when he interprets the new covenant “nation” and “seed” promise of Jeremiah 31:31-37 as old covenant Israel—not letting the context or the Apostle Paul define those terms for us. Why does Tim do this? Well because he has a dispensational Zionist that he can quote from that agrees with him which is important for him to find because his SYSTEM can’t have an appeal to the “sun” “moon” and “stars” as being the physical universe. We have now come full circle and seen the “absurd” conclusions of Tim Martin and his CC system just as we have of Ed Steven’s physical rapture view. If the promise to “never die” or that of eternal life was only received and fulfilled when the first century “rapture” took place, then logically there is no “eternal life” for us since we aren’t physically raptured.  Clearly the promise to “never die” has nothing to do with a physical rapture anymore than Jesus’ promises to “never hunger” and “never thirst” have something to do with an endless physical buffet. And we have come full circle to Tim’s absurd doctrine that the Bible never addresses God as the creator and sustainer of the physical universe. Equally absurd is that the heavens and earth of Psalm 102:25-27; Hebrews 1:10-12; 12:26-28; and Revelation 21:1 is the “heavens and earth” of Genesis 1:1.  Don’t flirt with either one of these absurd teachings is my advice.

Conclusion

This article has demonstrated through careful exegesis of Isaiah 51:15-16, its surrounding context, Psalm 102, Hebrews 1 and 9–12, Deuteronomy 32, and Revelation 21 that the “first” heavens and earth consistently refer to the Old Covenant order established at the Exodus and Sinai — not the physical creation of Genesis 1:1. The grammar, immediate literary context, Old Testament parallels, and New Testament application all converge on this covenantal reading. The Old Covenant “heavens and earth,” along with its temporary tabernacle system and the persecutors within it, passed away in AD 70 when the temple was destroyed. What remains is the unshakable New Covenant reality — the New Jerusalem as God’s Most Holy Place dwelling, the new covenant nation, and the bride adorned for her husband who now invites lost sinners to receive eternal life (Rev. 22:2, 17).

Tim Martin’s Covenant Creation view, which insists the only Old Covenant heavens and earth is that of Genesis 1–2 that passed away in AD 70, is exegetically untenable in light of these texts. The same is true for futurist interpretations that detach these passages from their redemptive-historical context. The biblical pattern is clear: the first Exodus and Sinai marriage/creation of Israel as God’s covenant people becomes the foundation and guarantee for the greater Second Exodus marriage/creation of God’s new covenant Israel fulfillment in Christ. This reading honors the grammar, the prophetic tradition, and the consistent testimony of Scripture.

[1] Augustine, Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm 102.

[2] Athanasius, Against the Arians, Discourse 2.

[3] John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, Psalm 102.

[4] Martin Luther, Lectures on the Psalms, Psalm 102.

[5] John Owen, Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold (Banner of Truth, 1965–68), vol. 1, pp. 336–337.

[6] The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge on Isaiah 51:16.

[7] Targum Jonathan on Isaiah 51:16.

[8] Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 99b.