Revelation 21:1-4 declares that in the New Jerusalem 'death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more,' while Isaiah 65:17-20's account of the 'new heavens and new earth' includes an infant living only a few days and describes anyone dying at a hundred as accursed -- implying death still occurs there. The two descriptions of the same 'new creation' contradict each other.

Isaiah 65:17-25 and Revelation 21-22 are not describing strictly the same phase of the redemptive timeline. Isaiah's oracle, delivered in the post-exilic restoration context of Isaiah 56-66, describes concrete this-worldly blessings -- people building houses and inhabiting them, planting vineyards and eating their fruit, extended (not eliminated) lifespans, labor not in vain -- an idealized future flourishing for Judah using 'new heavens and new earth' idiom hyperbolically for a transformed historical order, much as Isaiah elsewhere uses cosmic language for historical events (Isa 13:10, of Babylon's fall). Revelation 21-22 deliberately echoes and escalates Isaiah's own wording (Rev 21:1 directly draws on Isa 65:17) to describe the final, post-resurrection, post-judgment eternal state that explicitly follows the resurrection of the dead and final judgment narrated in Revelation 20 -- an intentional intensification of Isaiah's this-age promise into its unsurpassable form, following the pervasive NT pattern of taking OT restoration language and applying it typologically to its fuller eschatological referent (as with Joel 2 at Pentecost in Acts 2). This is not an ad hoc harmonization; it tracks how Revelation systematically draws on and heightens Isaiah's imagery throughout the book.

This progressive-revelation pattern -- promises given in provisional, historically embedded form later escalated to their full eschatological referent -- is a pervasive, coherent feature of biblical theology (also visible in the kingdom, temple, and covenant themes), reflecting a single unfolding redemptive plan rather than isolated, static prophetic snapshots.