Intertextuality Pair
Luke 21:12-19 → Ezra 6:18
Echo
Later text
Luke 21:12-19BSB
But before all this, they will seize you and persecute you. On account of My name they will deliver you to the synagogues and prisons, and they will bring you before kings and governors. This will be your opportunity to serve as witnesses. So make up your mind not to worry beforehand how to defend yourselves. For I will give you speech and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and some of you will be put to death. And you will be hated by everyone because of My name. Yet not even a hair of your head will perish. By your patient endurance you will gain your souls.
Earlier text
Ezra 6:18BSB
They also appointed the priests by their divisions and the Levites by their groups to the service of God in Jerusalem, according to what is written in the Book of Moses.
+ 2 more earlier texts
Earlier text
1 Kings 1:52BSB
And Solomon replied, “If he is a man of character, not a single hair of his will fall to the ground. But if evil is found in him, he will die.”
Earlier text
Ezra 5:9BSB
So we questioned the elders and asked, “Who authorized you to rebuild this temple and restore this structure?”
Significance
The pairing named in this file's title does not survive examination. Luke 21:12-19 is Jesus' prediction that his disciples will be seized, handed over to synagogues and prisons, dragged before kings and governors, betrayed by their own families, and put to death — with the promise that he himself will supply the words of their defense and that not a hair of their heads will perish. Ezra 6:18 records the organizing of priests into divisions and Levites into groups for temple service at the dedication of the second temple, "according to what is written in the Book of Moses." The two texts share no vocabulary, no situation, and no argument. Nothing in Ezra 6 concerns persecution, testimony, or preservation, and Luke neither cites nor reasons from it.
- Found via
- No public domain commentary confirmation available
- Reference Type
- Echo
- Connection Method(s)
- None warranted for the named source
The one clause with a genuine Old Testament pedigree is Luke 21:18, "not even a hair of your head will perish." That is a fixed Hebrew idiom of total preservation, used of Solomon's conditional clemency toward Adonijah (1 Kings 1:52), of the people's oath rescuing Jonathan (1 Samuel 14:45), and of David's promise to Amasa's kinsmen (2 Samuel 14:11). Luke uses it again at Acts 27:34. Because it is a stock idiom rather than a citation of any one passage, it establishes an idiomatic continuity, not a method-bearing intertextual relation to a particular text — and in any case not to Ezra 6:18.
A faint situational parallel does exist further down the source list: Ezra 5:9, where imperial officers interrogate the returned exiles — "Who authorized you to rebuild this temple?" — and the elders answer and are vindicated. That resembles the shape of Luke 21:12-15 (hauled before governors, given an answer none can contradict). But resemblance of circumstance is not intertextuality, and Luke gives no signal of drawing on Ezra. Luke's own stated intertext for this discourse lies elsewhere: the disciples' Spirit-given speech before rulers is the outworking of the promise Jesus attaches to the Son of Man's own vindication, and the persecution-then-witness pattern is developed by Luke himself in Acts 4-7, not borrowed from the restoration chronicles.
Recommended disposition: the Ezra 6:18 pairing should be withdrawn or the file re-anchored to 1 Kings 1:52 for the hair idiom. Retained here without deletion for judgment.
