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An Intertextuality Pair — one connection between two passages, shown as linked verse cards: the Later text and the Earlier text it quotes, alludes to or echoes. The Significance essay explains why the link matters and where it points in Christ.

Reference Type— how explicit the link is: Quotation, Allusion, or Echo
Connection Method(s)— how it carries meaning: e.g. Typology, Promise-Fulfillment, Analogy, Longitudinal Theme
Found via— where the connection was identified, e.g. the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge or an Anchor-Text Network

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Intertextuality Pair

Matthew 26:67 → Isaiah 50:6

Allusion

Later text

Matthew 26:67BSB

Then they spit in His face and struck Him. Others slapped Him

Earlier text

Isaiah 50:6BSB

I offered My back to those who struck Me, and My cheeks to those who tore out My beard. I did not hide My face from scorn and spittle.

Significance

Matthew's account of the night trial reads: "Then they spit in His face and struck Him. Others slapped Him" (26:67). Spittle in the face and blows to the cheek are the two indignities Isaiah's Servant says He accepted without turning away: "My cheeks to those who tore out My beard. I did not hide My face from scorn and spittle" (Isa 50:6). Matthew, who so often marks fulfillment with a formula, adds none here. He lets the scene speak, and a reader who knows the Third Servant Song hears it. The Servant's face is not hidden; it is offered. The taunt that follows, "Prophesy to us, Christ! Who hit You?" (26:68), shows the men mocking His prophetic office while unknowingly acting out the prophecy about Him. The One they strike is the Servant who "offered" His back and His cheeks to this, and the face they spit on is the face in which God's glory is seen. Beholding Him there, silent and unhidden for our sake, "we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into His image with intensifying glory" (2 Cor 3:18).

Found via: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Promise-Fulfillment

Text-form: This is a weaker verbal link than its Markan parallel (Mark 14:65). Word for word, Matthew shares with LXX Isaiah 50:6 only πρόσωπον ("face"), a very common word that proves nothing by itself. The correspondence is carried by cognates: Matthew's "spit" (ἐμπτύω) and "slapped" (ῥαπίζω) are the verbs from which the Greek Isaiah's nouns "spitting" (ἔμπτυσμα) and "slaps" (ῥάπισμα) are formed. Mark 14:65 keeps Isaiah's noun "slaps" itself. The slaps follow the Greek text-form: the Hebrew of the cheek clause reads "those who tore out My beard." The spitting stands in both forms. Matthew's "struck Him" (κολαφίζω, with fists) is not Isaiah's word.

Linked Mentions 1

Trajectory Tables 1

Suffering Servant (Vicarious Atonement) Trajectory Table