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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

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Intertextuality Pair

Acts 2:42-47 → Ecclesiastes 9:7

Echo

Later text

Acts 2:42-47BSB

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. A sense of awe came over everyone, and the apostles performed many wonders and signs. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they shared with anyone who was in need. With one accord they continued to meet daily in the temple courts and to break bread from house to house, sharing their meals with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Earlier text

Ecclesiastes 9:7BSB

Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for God has already approved your works:

Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square14:07

Significance

Luke’s portrait of the first Spirit-filled community — devoted to the apostles’ teaching, the breaking of bread, and prayer, sharing all things, and eating together “with glad and sincere hearts” (Acts 2:42-47) — is expressed in language echoing the wisdom tradition’s commendation of received joy: “Go, eat your bread with gladness” (Ecclesiastes 9:7). The link is verbal and thematic rather than a formal citation: the fruit of the Spirit’s coming is a people whose common life overflows in glad-hearted fellowship and daily praise. Ecclesiastes counseled joy in God’s simple gifts under the sun; Pentecost pours out the fuller joy of the age to come, tasted now at a shared table. The scene is a firstfruits of the redeemed community’s end — a people gathered around the risen Christ, whose gladness is not escapism but the natural response of hearts that have found in Him the treasure the Preacher sought and could not name.

Found via: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Echo
Connection Method(s): Redemptive-Historical Progression; Contrast (joy at the table under the sun, bounded by Sheol, becomes joy at the table in the risen Christ)