Later text
Acts 13:10BSB
and said, “O child of the devil and enemy of all righteousness, you are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery! Will you never stop perverting the straight ways of the Lord?
Intertextuality Pair
Acts 13:10 → Isaiah 40:3
Allusion
Earlier text
Isaiah 40:3BSB
A voice of one calling: "Prepare the way for the LORD in the wilderness; make a straight highway for our God in the desert.
+ 3 more earlier texts
Earlier text
Like cages full of birds, so their houses are full of deceit. Therefore they have become powerful and rich.
Earlier text
Hosea 14:9BSB
Whoever is wise, let him understand these things; whoever is discerning, let him know them. For the ways of the LORD are right, and the righteous walk in them but the rebellious stumble in them.
Earlier text
He who walks in integrity walks securely, but he who perverts his ways will be found out.
Significance
Paul rebukes Elymas the sorcerer: "Will you never stop perverting the straight ways of the Lord?" (Acts 13:10). The phrase inverts Isaiah's herald-cry to prepare the way of the LORD and "make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God" (Isaiah 40:3). Where John the Baptist and the apostolic gospel make the Lord's paths straight, Elymas labors to make them crooked, opposing the proconsul's hearing of the word. The connection is one of pointed contrast: the sorcerer is the anti-herald, "a child of the devil and enemy of all righteousness," set against the messengers who prepare the way. His judicial blinding (Acts 13:11) exposes his own darkness even as the gospel's straight path advances — vindicating the way of the Lord that no crookedness can finally bend.
- Found via
- Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
- Reference Type
- Allusion
- Connection Method(s)
- Contrast
Related Anchor-Text Networks
▸ A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
Linked Mentions 1