Later text
Acts 7:38BSB
He was in the assembly in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our fathers. And he received living words to pass on to us.
Intertextuality Pair
Acts 7:38 → Exodus 20:21-22
Allusion
Earlier text
And the people stood at a distance as Moses approached the thick darkness where God was. Then the LORD said to Moses, “This is what you are to tell the Israelites: ‘You have seen for yourselves that I have spoken to you from heaven.
+ 3 more earlier texts
Earlier text
Exodus 20:19BSB
"Speak to us yourself and we will listen," they said to Moses. "But do not let God speak to us, or we will die."
Earlier text
I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. I will put My words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him.
Earlier text
This is what you asked of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, "Let us not hear the voice of the LORD our God or see this great fire anymore, so that we will not die!"
Significance
Stephen calls Moses the mediator who "was in the assembly in the wilderness... and received living words to pass on to us" (Acts 7:38; Exodus 20:21-22). Moses stands between God and the people — ascending into the thick darkness where God was, receiving the "living words" (the living oracles), and bringing them down to Israel. Stephen's phrase honors the law as living and God-given, refuting any charge that he despised it; the tragedy is not the law but Israel's failure to keep the living words entrusted to them (7:53). Moses the mediator of the old-covenant word foreshadows the one Mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5), through whom God has spoken not merely living words but the living Word himself — the law now written by the Spirit on the hearts of a redeemed people.
- Found via
- Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
- Reference Type
- Allusion
- Connection Method(s)
- Typology