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An Intertextuality Pair — one connection between two passages, shown as linked verse cards: the Later text and the Earlier text it quotes, alludes to or echoes. The Significance essay explains why the link matters and where it points in Christ.

Reference Type— how explicit the link is: Quotation, Allusion, or Echo
Connection Method(s)— how it carries meaning: e.g. Typology, Promise-Fulfillment, Analogy, Longitudinal Theme
Found via— where the connection was identified, e.g. the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge or an Anchor-Text Network

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Intertextuality Pair

Acts 14:16 → Isaiah 37:14-20

Echo

Later text

Acts 14:16BSB

In past generations, He let all nations go their own way.

Earlier text

Isaiah 37:14-20BSB

So Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers, read it, and went up to the house of the LORD and spread it out before the LORD. And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD: “O LORD of Hosts, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You made the heavens and the earth. Incline Your ear, O LORD, and hear; open Your eyes, O LORD, and see. Listen to all the words that Sennacherib has sent to defy the living God. Truly, O LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all these countries and their lands. They have cast their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not gods, but only wood and stone—the work of human hands. And now, O LORD our God, save us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, O LORD, are God.”

Significance

When Paul says God "let all nations go their own way" (Acts 14:16), the sovereignty he assumes echoes Hezekiah's prayer, which confesses the LORD alone as God over all the kingdoms of the earth and dismisses the nations' idols as the work of human hands (Isaiah 37:16-19). The link is thematic rather than a quotation: both texts set the one Creator against the futility of the nations' gods and place the history of the peoples under his rule. Paul's point at Lystra is that this forbearance was never indifference — the God who let the nations go their own way was all the while leaving a witness in the rains and fruitful seasons (Acts 14:17), and has now ended the age of overlooking by commanding all people everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30). The sovereignty Hezekiah pleaded in crisis is the very sovereignty that now sends the gospel to the nations once left to themselves.

Found via: G.K. Beale & D.A. Carson (eds.), Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (2007)
Reference Type: Echo
Connection Method(s): Longitudinal Theme (the living God, Maker of heaven and earth, against the nations' handmade gods; Hezekiah's prayer "that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, O LORD, are God" answered as the gospel reaches the nations)