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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 2:37 → Genesis 34:7

Echo

Later text

Acts 2:37BSB

When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and asked Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

Earlier text

Genesis 34:7BSB

When Jacob's sons heard what had happened, they returned from the field. They were filled with grief and fury, because Shechem had committed an outrage in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter—a thing that should not be done.

+ 1 more earlier text

Earlier text

Psalms 109:16BSB

For he never thought to show kindness, but pursued the poor and needy and brokenhearted, even to their death.

Significance

When the crowd heard Peter’s verdict, “they were cut to the heart and said... ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’” (Acts 2:37). The verb katanyssomai (“to be pierced, stung”) renders the deep, painful compunction the Greek Old Testament attaches to grief over sin and violated covenant — the anguish that “grieved” the sons of Jacob at Shechem (Genesis 34:7) and the crushing of a broken and needy heart (Psalm 109:16). This is no mere regret but the wound the Spirit inflicts through the preached word, exposing the hearers’ guilt in crucifying their Lord. Yet the piercing is mercy: it drives them not to despair but to the question of hope, “What shall we do?” — answered at once with the gospel’s summons to repentance, forgiveness, and the gift of the Spirit (2:38). The word that pierces is the word that heals; the same Christ they had crucified is the One in whose name they may now be saved.

Found via: G.K. Beale & D.A. Carson (eds.), Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament
Reference Type: Echo
Connection Method(s): Contrast (the same rare verb of piercing grief: Jacob's sons, pierced over an outrage done to them, answer "deceitfully" and take the sword; Peter's hearers, pierced over the outrage they did to the Lord, ask "Brothers, what shall we do?" and are given forgiveness)