Later text
Acts 7:23BSB
When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his brothers, the children of Israel.
Intertextuality Pair
Acts 7:23 → Exodus 2:11
Allusion
Earlier text
Exodus 2:11BSB
One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to his own people and observed their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people.
+ 3 more earlier texts
Earlier text
Exodus 2:11BSB
One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to his own people and observed their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people.
Earlier text
Whoever invokes a blessing in the land will do so by the God of truth, and whoever takes an oath in the land will swear by the God of truth. For the former troubles will be forgotten and hidden from My sight. For behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.
Earlier text
“In those days, when you multiply and increase in the land,” declares the LORD, “they will no longer discuss the ark of the covenant of the LORD. It will never come to mind, and no one will remember it or miss it, nor will another one be made.
Significance
"When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his brothers, the children of Israel" (Acts 7:23). Stephen frames Moses' life in three forty-year spans — forty in Egypt, forty in Midian, forty in the wilderness — presenting a life wholly ordered by God's timing. At forty Moses first turns toward his enslaved kinsmen, moved by solidarity with "his brothers," the impulse of a deliverer identifying with those he will save. The stress on "his brothers" anticipates the rejection to come, for they will refuse the brother sent to help them. So too the true Deliverer "is not ashamed to call them brothers" (Hebrews 2:11), taking up the cause of those who would reject him, that he might bring many sons to glory.
- Found via
- Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
- Reference Type
- Allusion
- Connection Method(s)
- Redemptive-Historical Progression