2 Peter 3:13

we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth The promise of which the Apostle speaks is that of Isaiah 65:17; Isaiah 66:22, where we have the very words, "new heavens and a new earth," the context there connecting it with the restoration of Israel to their own land and the renewed glory of Jerusalem. The same hope shews itself in the visions of the Apocalypse (Revelation 21:1) as connected with the "new Jerusalem" coming down from God, and appears in a fuller and more expanded form in the Apocryphal Book of Enoch. "The former heaven shall pass away and a new heaven shall shew itself" (chap. xcii. 17). "The earth shall be cleansed from all corruption, from every crime, from all punishment" (c. x. 2 7).

wherein dwelleth righteousness This again reproduces the thought of Isaiah (Isaiah 65:25) that "they shall not hurt (LXX. "act unrighteously") nor destroy in all my holy mountain," and St John's account of the new Jerusalem that "there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth" (Revelation 21:27). It is implied in St Paul's belief that "the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption" (Romans 8:21). Earth itself, purified and redeemed, is to be the scene of the blessedness of the saved, as it has been, through the long æons of its existence, of sin and wretchedness.