Intertextuality Pair

Acts 10:4 → Leviticus 2:2

Allusion

Later text

Acts 10:4BSB

Cornelius stared at him in fear and asked, “What is it, Lord?” The angel answered, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have ascended as a memorial offering before God.

Earlier text

Leviticus 2:2BSB

and bring it to Aaron's sons the priests. The priest shall take a handful of the flour and oil, together with all the frankincense, and burn this as a memorial portion on the altar, an offering made by fire, a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
+ 1 more earlier text

Earlier text

Psalms 141:2BSB

May my prayer be set before You like incense, my uplifted hands like the evening offering.
Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square13:28

Significance

"Your prayers and gifts to the poor have ascended as a memorial offering before God" (Acts 10:4). The angel describes Cornelius's devotion in the language of the grain offering, whose "memorial portion" the priest burned "as an offering made by fire, a pleasing aroma to the LORD" (Leviticus 2:2). By analogy, prayer and mercy rise to God as sacrifice once did — a figure the Psalms use when they ask that prayer be set before God like incense (Psalms 141:2). Cornelius's worship is accepted, though he stands outside the temple and its altar, because acceptance was never finally in the ritual but in the God to whom it pointed. The whole sacrificial system finds its terminus in Christ, through whom the prayers and praise of His people become a sacrifice of praise pleasing to God — not by their own worth, but in the Beloved.

Found via
Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type
Allusion
Connection Method(s)
Analogy

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