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.
Intertextuality Pair
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
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.
Earlier text
Psalms 141:2BSB
May my prayer be set before You like incense, my uplifted hands like the evening offering.
"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.