How to read this page

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 15:3 → Habakkuk 1:5

Echo

Later text

Acts 15:3BSB

Sent on their way by the church, they passed through Phoenicia and Samaria, recounting the conversion of the Gentiles and bringing great joy to all the brothers.

Earlier text

Habakkuk 1:5BSB

"Look at the nations and observe—be utterly astounded! For I am doing a work in your days that you would never believe even if someone told you.

Significance

As Paul and Barnabas travel to Jerusalem "recounting the conversion of the Gentiles and bringing great joy to all the brothers" (Acts 15:3), Luke's report of God's astonishing work faintly echoes Habakkuk 1:5, which Paul had already cited at Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13:41): "I am doing a work in your days that you would never believe even if someone told you." In Habakkuk the unbelievable "work" was God's raising up of the Chaldeans in judgment; in Acts it is the ingathering of the nations. The connection is a resonance rather than a citation, yet it is theologically apt: the God who does incredible works in history is now doing the greatest of them. What once provoked scoffing unbelief (Habakkuk 1:5; Acts 13:41) now brings great joy among those who believe, for the same sovereign hand is drawing Gentiles to Christ.

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): Contrast; New Testament References (Paul quoted Habakkuk 1:5 at Acts 13:41, and Luke's "recounting" is that quotation's verb)