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 22:11 → Deuteronomy 28:28-29

Allusion

Later text

Acts 22:11BSB

Because the brilliance of the light had blinded me, my companions led me by the hand into Damascus.

Earlier text

Deuteronomy 28:28-29BSB

The LORD will afflict you with madness, blindness, and confusion of mind, and at noon you will grope about like a blind man in the darkness. You will not prosper in your ways. Day after day you will be oppressed and plundered, with no one to save you.

Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square13:44

Significance

Struck down near Damascus, Paul reports, "Because the brilliance of the light had blinded me, my companions led me by the hand into Damascus" (Acts 22:11) — blinded at midday. His condition recalls the covenant curse of Deuteronomy, where the LORD strikes the disobedient with "madness, blindness, and confusion of mind," so that "at noon you will grope about like a blind man in the darkness" (Deuteronomy 28:28-29). The zealous persecutor of the Way is momentarily placed under the very curse of the covenant he thought he was defending — blinded at noon, groping, dependent. Yet by analogy the curse becomes mercy: Paul's physical blindness exposes his prior spiritual blindness, and its healing three days later signals the light of the gospel breaking upon him. The one who came to open blind eyes first closes Paul's, that he might see the Righteous One (Acts 22:14) and be sent to turn others from darkness to light (Acts 26:18).

Found via: G.K. Beale & D.A. Carson (eds.), Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (2007)
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Analogy