Intertextuality Pair

Acts 10:15 → Leviticus 13:13

Allusion

Later text

Acts 10:15BSB

The voice spoke to him a second time: “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

Earlier text

Leviticus 13:13BSB

the priest shall examine him, and if the disease has covered his entire body, he is to pronounce the infected person clean. Since it has all turned white, he is clean.
+ 1 more earlier text

Earlier text

Daniel 1:8BSB

But Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself with the king’s food or wine. So he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself.

Significance

The heavenly voice — "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean" (Acts 10:15) — turns on the verb of the priestly verdict. Under the Law it was the priest who, examining the diseased, was "to pronounce the infected person clean" (Leviticus 13:13), and the whole system rested on that authorized declaration of cleanness and uncleanness. Peter's vision relocates the verdict: God Himself has now cleansed, and no one may reverse His pronouncement. Daniel's refusal of the king's defiling food (Daniel 1:8) marks the old-covenant faithfulness the boundary once demanded; the vision announces its fulfillment. What God cleanses is clean — and the immediate application is the Gentile household of Cornelius, cleansed not by ritual but by faith (Acts 15:9), so that the good news runs past every barrier to the ends of the earth in Christ.

Found via
G.K. Beale and D.A. Carson, Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament
Reference Type
Allusion
Connection Method(s)
Contrast

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