Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens will vanish away like smoke, and the earth will wear out like a garment. Its inhabitants will die in the same way, but my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will not be abolished.
All stars will eventually vanish, the Earth will grow old, and all life on it will die.
Astronomy
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The cited passage
What current science says
Here is a rare case where the text lands on something partly accurate. Stars will indeed 'vanish': the last red dwarf stars will burn out in roughly 100 trillion years. Earth will become uninhabitable when the sun expands into a red giant in about 5 billion years, and all current life will eventually die. But this isn't prophecy — it's basic stellar physics. The text frames this as divine punishment or decree, not thermodynamics. The timescale, though, is vast: these events lie billions of years in the future.
What the text says
This comes from Isaiah 51:6. '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' — a prediction of cosmic mortality that happens to align with stellar physics, though framed as divine punishment rather than thermodynamics.
Three honest ways to read this passage
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As history
The text records how its authors understood the world with the knowledge they had. Read this way, a difference from modern science is a window into the ancient mind, not a failure.
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As accommodation
The text speaks to its first audience in their own terms, to make a point that isn't mainly about physics or biology. Read this way, the scientific detail is the vehicle, not the cargo.
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As contradiction
The text makes a claim about the physical world that modern findings dispute. Read this way, the difference is a genuine factual disagreement worth naming.
GEBible doesn't pick one of these for you. Each entry shows the passage, what it says, and what current science says — nothing more.