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

Graph View — tap the constellation icon in the top bar to see this page's connections as a web of light: gold points are passages, and the coloured threads are the connection types. Click any type in the graph's own legend to filter it in or out, and use the expand control for the full-screen night sky.

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Intertextuality Pair

Acts 17:27 → Amos 5:4

Echo

Later text

Acts 17:27BSB

God intended that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.

Earlier text

Amos 5:4BSB

For this is what the LORD says to the house of Israel: “Seek Me and live!

+ 3 more earlier texts

Earlier text

Deuteronomy 4:29BSB

But if from there you will seek the LORD your God, you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.

Earlier text

Isaiah 51:1BSB

"Listen to Me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the LORD: Look to the rock from which you were cut, and to the quarry from which you were hewn.

Earlier text

Jeremiah 29:13BSB

You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.

Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square13:51

Significance

The goal of God's ordering of history, Paul says, is "that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us" (Acts 17:27), taking up the OT's recurring summons to seek the Lord — "Seek Me and live!" (Amos 5:4; cf. Deuteronomy 4:29; Jeremiah 29:13). The pathos of Paul's "perhaps reach out for Him" registers the fall's darkening of that search: the nations grope after a God who is nonetheless near. Yet the OT promise stands — those who truly seek do find — and the gospel announces that the God once sought in shadows has drawn near in Christ, not far but incarnate, crucified, and raised. The seeking the prophets commanded is answered by the God who first sought his people, and who now commands all everywhere to repent and find him in his Son.

Found via: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Echo
Connection Method(s): Longitudinal Theme