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 19:9 → Exodus 13:15

Echo

Later text

Acts 19:9BSB

But when some of them stubbornly refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way, Paul took his disciples and left the synagogue to conduct daily discussions in the lecture hall of Tyrannus.

Earlier text

Exodus 13:15BSB

And when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the LORD killed every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both of man and beast. This is why I sacrifice to the LORD the firstborn male of every womb, but I redeem all the firstborn of my sons.'

Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square13:47

Significance

When "some of them stubbornly refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way" at Ephesus (Acts 19:9), Luke's hardening vocabulary recalls the Greek OT's account of Pharaoh, who "stubbornly refused to let us go" (Exodus 13:15). The echo casts the synagogue's unbelief in the mold of Egypt's hardness: confronted with God's saving work, the human heart resists and hardens. The parallel is by analogy — a recurring pattern of hardening before God's redemptive acts — not a designed type. As with Pharaoh, hardening does not thwart God's purpose but redirects it: Paul withdraws to the hall of Tyrannus, and the word spreads through all Asia. The same gospel that softens some hardens others, until Christ, the greater deliverance the exodus foreshadowed, divides every hearer by their response to him.

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): Analogy