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

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 26:18 → Isaiah 42:7

Allusion

Later text

Acts 26:18BSB

to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those sanctified by faith in Me.’

Earlier text

Isaiah 42:7BSB

to open the eyes of the blind, to bring prisoners out of the dungeon and those sitting in darkness out from the prison house.

+ 2 more earlier texts

Earlier text

Isaiah 42:16BSB

I will lead the blind by a way they did not know; I will guide them on unfamiliar paths. I will turn darkness into light before them and rough places into level ground. These things I will do for them, and I will not forsake them.

Earlier text

Isaiah 61:1BSB

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is on Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners,

Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square13:35

Significance

Paul states the goal of his commission: to "open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins" (Acts 26:18). Every clause is drawn from the Servant Songs, where the LORD appoints his Servant "to open the eyes of the blind, to bring prisoners out of the dungeon and those sitting in darkness out from the prison house" (Isaiah 42:7; cf. 42:16; 61:1). What Isaiah promised the Servant would accomplish, the risen Christ now accomplishes through his apostle — the Servant's own mission extended into the Gentile world. Paul is not the Servant but the Servant's herald: the eye-opening, captive-freeing work belongs to Christ, and Paul is sent to announce it, so that blind eyes opened and prisoners released are the direct fruit of the Servant's finished work now proclaimed.

Found via: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Promise-Fulfillment

▸ Behold My Servant

Linked Mentions 3

Trajectory Tables 1

Gentile Inclusion (Light to the Nations) Trajectory Table

Anchor Texts 2

Acts 26:18 → Isaiah 42:7

Significance

Related Anchor-Text Networks