Later text
Acts 7:46BSB
who found favor in the sight of God and asked to provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob.
Intertextuality Pair
Allusion
Later text
Acts 7:46BSB
who found favor in the sight of God and asked to provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob.
Earlier text
There Hadad found such great favor in the sight of Pharaoh that he gave to him in marriage the sister of Queen Tahpenes, his own wife.
Earlier text
Then Shechem said to Dinah's father and brothers, "Grant me this favor, and I will give you whatever you ask.
Earlier text
Genesis 6:8BSB
Noah, however, found favor in the eyes of the LORD.
Earlier text
Then Moses said to the LORD, “Look, You have been telling me, ‘Lead this people up,’ but You have not let me know whom You will send with me. Yet You have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have found favor in My sight.’ Now if indeed I have found favor in Your sight, please let me know Your ways, that I may know You and find favor in Your sight. Remember that this nation is Your people." And the LORD answered, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” “If Your Presence does not go with us,” Moses replied, “do not lead us up from here. For how then can it be known that Your people and I have found favor in Your sight, unless You go with us? How else will we be distinguished from all the other people on the face of the earth?” So the LORD said to Moses, “I will do this very thing you have asked, for you have found favor in My sight, and I know you by name.”
David, who "found favor in the sight of God," "asked to provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob" (Acts 7:46). Stephen honors David's desire to build God a house, yet the wording already leans toward his climax: even the king after God's own heart could only "ask" to house the God who cannot be housed. The longing for a dwelling for God is right, but its true satisfaction is not a structure. God answered David not by accepting a house from him but by promising to build David a house — a dynasty culminating in the Son who is himself God's dwelling with man (2 Samuel 7:11-16; John 2:19-21). The favor David found foreshadows the grace by which God comes to dwell not in cedar but in flesh, and finally in a people made his temple by the Spirit.