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 7:44 → Exodus 27:21

Allusion

Later text

Acts 7:44BSB

Our fathers had the tabernacle of the Testimony with them in the wilderness. It was constructed exactly as God had directed Moses, according to the pattern he had seen.

Earlier text

Exodus 27:21BSB

In the Tent of Meeting, outside the veil that is in front of the Testimony, Aaron and his sons are to tend the lamps before the LORD from evening until morning. This is to be a permanent statute for the Israelites for the generations to come.

+ 2 more earlier texts

Earlier text

Exodus 38:21BSB

This is the inventory for the tabernacle, the tabernacle of the Testimony, as recorded at Moses' command by the Levites under the direction of Ithamar son of Aaron the priest.

Earlier text

Exodus 25:21BSB

Set the mercy seat atop the ark, and put the Testimony that I will give you into the ark.

Walk the Square · this video walks Acts 7:44-46 as a whole, from Acts 7.46 → Psalms 132.513:19

Significance

Against the backdrop of Israel's idolatry, Stephen recalls the true sanctuary: "Our fathers had the tabernacle of the Testimony with them in the wilderness... constructed exactly as God had directed Moses, according to the pattern he had seen" (Acts 7:44; Exodus 27:21). The tabernacle was legitimate precisely because it was not a work of human imagination but a copy made "according to the pattern" shown on the mountain — "a copy and shadow of what is in heaven" (Hebrews 8:5). Stephen honors the God-given tent even as he prepares to relativize the temple: the earthly sanctuary was always a shadow pointing beyond itself. Its heavenly original is realized in Christ, in whom "all the fullness of the Deity dwells in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9) — the true tabernacle the wilderness tent only sketched.

Found via: Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible (1834)
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Typology + Longitudinal Theme

Linked Mentions 1

Trajectory Tables 1

Heavenly Sanctuary (The True Tabernacle) Trajectory Table