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 7:48 → Genesis 14:18

Echo

Later text

Acts 7:48BSB

However, the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says:

Earlier text

Genesis 14:18BSB

Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine—since he was priest of God Most High—

+ 3 more earlier texts

Earlier text

Leviticus 26:1BSB

"You must not make idols for yourselves or set up a carved image or sacred pillar; you must not place a sculpted stone in your land to bow down to it. For I am the LORD your God.

Earlier text

Isaiah 46:6BSB

They pour out their bags of gold and weigh out silver on scales; they hire a goldsmith to fashion it into a god, so they can bow down and worship.

Earlier text

Isaiah 16:12BSB

When Moab appears on the high place, when he wearies himself and enters his sanctuary to pray, it will do him no good.

Significance

"However, the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands" (Acts 7:48). This is the theological summit of Stephen's speech. The divine title "Most High" (El Elyon), first sounded when Melchizedek blessed Abram as "priest of God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth" (Genesis 14:18-19), names the God whose greatness transcends every sanctuary. Stephen does not attack the temple as such — God commanded it — but shatters the idolatry of the temple, the notion that God can be localized, possessed, or leveraged by the place his people built. The Creator of heaven and earth cannot be housed by hands; he chooses instead to dwell among his people by his own initiative, supremely in the incarnate Son and by his indwelling Spirit. The charge that Stephen blasphemed "this holy place" collapses before the God who is too great for any place and yet draws near to sinners in Christ.

Found via: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Echo
Connection Method(s): Longitudinal Theme