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 17:29 → Exodus 20:4

Allusion

Later text

Acts 17:29BSB

Therefore, being offspring of God, we should not think that the Divine Being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by man’s skill and imagination.

Earlier text

Exodus 20:4BSB

You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in the heavens above, on the earth below, or in the waters beneath.

+ 3 more earlier texts

Earlier text

Deuteronomy 5:8BSB

You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in the heavens above, on the earth below, or in the waters beneath.

Earlier text

Deuteronomy 4:28BSB

And there you will serve man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell.

Earlier text

Deuteronomy 29:17BSB

You saw the abominations and idols among them made of wood and stone, of silver and gold.

Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square13:26

Significance

From humanity's standing as God's offspring Paul draws the second-commandment conclusion: "being offspring of God, we should not think that the Divine Being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by man's skill and imagination" (Acts 17:29). The reasoning is the Decalogue's own — "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything" (Exodus 20:4) — sharpened by the prophets' mockery of the idol-maker who fashions a god from the wood he also burns for fuel (Isaiah 44:9-20). It is absurd for the living image-bearer to bow to a lifeless image of his own making; the creature cannot manufacture the Creator. Paul exposes idolatry as a reversal of creation's order and points beyond it to the one true image of God, Christ himself (Colossians 1:15), before whom all image-worship must give way to repentance.

Found via: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Analogy

▸ The Decalogue

Linked Mentions 1

Anchor Texts 1

Exodus 20 — The Decalogue

Acts 17:29 → Exodus 20:4

Significance

Related Anchor-Text Networks