---
title: Isaiah 65:20
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/isaiah-65-20/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/isaiah-65-20.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Isaiah 65:20
testament: OT
section: Prophets
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Isaiah 65:20

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> No longer will a nursing infant live but a few days, or an old man fail to live out his years. For the youth will die at a hundred years, and he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed.

## JW Usage

Isaiah 65:20 — "no more will there be an infant from that place who lives but a few days, nor an old man who fails to live out his days" (NWT) — is a Watchtower paradise-earth proof-text. The verse is read as describing post-Armageddon conditions in the New Earth: extended lifespan, restored bodies, the fulfilment of the earthly hope for the great crowd.

## Protestant Usage

Isaiah 65:20 is the verse the Watchtower's "no more death in paradise" teaching cannot accommodate. Read carefully: "the one who dies at a hundred years of age will be considered a mere boy, and the sinner will be cursed even though he is a hundred years of age." The verse explicitly says people will still die — at very old ages, but they will die. And it speaks of "the sinner" still being cursed within this restored age. Both features are incompatible with the Watchtower's no-death-no-sin paradise teaching. Pair with the beatitudes-unity argument: the "earthly hope" reading of Old Testament restoration prophecy fragments under the texts themselves. The faithful reading is figurative — Isaiah uses the language of an extended, blessed earthly life as a vehicle for describing the new-creation hope, which the New Testament consummates in Revelation 21 (the new heaven and new earth united, no more death).

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [Beatitudes Unity — Same Audience, Same Hope](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/beatitudes-unity.md) — Matthew 5:3-12 / Ephesians 4:4 / Revelation 21:1-3 [Eschatology]