NT Text: Acts 2:31
OT Source(s):
Source: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Promise-Fulfillment
Anchor Text: Psalm 2 — You Are My Son
Significance: The connection runs through the title rather than a quotation. Peter says David, "foreseeing" what was to come, "spoke about the resurrection of the Christ (tou Christou)" — and this absolute use of "the Christ" as a known, expected figure presupposes the psalter's category of Yahweh's Anointed, articulated programmatically in Psalm 2:2 LXX ("against the LORD and against His Anointed [kata tou christou autou]"). Two interpretive moves are embedded. First, David is treated as a prophet (2:30): the royal psalms are read not as self-description exhausted in David's own career but as Spirit-given foresight of the coming Anointed — the same conviction that grounds the explicit Psalm 2 citation at Acts 4:25 ("who by the Holy Spirit spoke through the mouth of our father David"). Second, the resurrection is what identifies which figure the title names: the Anointed against whom the rulers took their stand (Ps 2:2) is the Jesus whom God raised (2:32) and "made both Lord and Christ" (2:36) — Peter's climactic line restoring both Psalm 2 titles (LORD and Anointed) to the risen Jesus. The verbal link is the shared title alone; the text actually quoted in Acts 2:31 is Psalm 16:10 ("not abandoned to Hades… nor did His body see decay"). The Psalm 2 connection is therefore allusion-grade: it supplies the messianic category within which the Psalm 16 argument operates, rather than the quoted text itself.