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 19:19 → Deuteronomy 18:10-14

Allusion

Later text

Acts 19:19BSB

And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books and burned them in front of everyone. When the value of the books was calculated, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas.

Earlier text

Deuteronomy 18:10-14BSB

Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, practices divination or conjury, interprets omens, practices sorcery, casts spells, consults a medium or spiritist, or inquires of the dead. For whoever does these things is detestable to the LORD. And because of these detestable things, the LORD your God is driving out the nations before you. You must be blameless before the LORD your God. Though these nations, which you will dispossess, listen to conjurers and diviners, the LORD your God has not permitted you to do so.

Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square13:57

Significance

The Ephesian converts who "had practiced magic arts brought their books and burned them in front of everyone" (Acts 19:19), enacting in the gospel age the Torah's ban on sorcery. Deuteronomy 18:10-14 forbids Israel to imitate the nations' diviners and mediums, "for whoever does these things is detestable to the LORD" (Deuteronomy 18:12), and calls the people to be blameless before him. What the Law commanded, the Spirit now produces willingly: gospel repentance drives out the occult more decisively than any statute, and "the word of the Lord powerfully continued to spread and prevail" (Acts 19:20). The prohibition of divination looked forward to a people cleansed from dark powers and given, in place of forbidden oracles, the true Prophet God promised to raise up in the same chapter (Deuteronomy 18:15) — Christ, in whom they need no sorcery, for they have the truth.

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