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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 7:49-50 → Isaiah 66:1-2

Quotation

Later text

Acts 7:49-50BSB

‘Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. What kind of house will you build for Me, says the Lord, or where will My place of repose be? Has not My hand made all these things?’

Earlier text

Isaiah 66:1-2BSB

This is what the LORD says: “Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool. What kind of house will you build for Me? Or where will My place of repose be? Has not My hand made all these things? And so they came into being,” declares the LORD. “This is the one I will esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, who trembles at My word.

Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square12:21

Significance

Stephen quotes Isaiah 66:1-2 with the introductory formula "as the prophet says" to argue that God cannot be confined to a humanly constructed dwelling — "Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. What kind of house will you build for Me, says the Lord, or where will My place of repose be? Has not My hand made all these things?" This quotation is the climax of Stephen's argument about the temple. He has traced the history from the tabernacle (Acts 7:44) through Solomon's temple (Acts 7:47), arriving at the prophetic critique that "the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands" (Acts 7:48). The connection operates through the longitudinal theme of temple and divine presence (tracing how God's dwelling with his people develops across the canon toward its fulfillment in Christ as the true temple, John 2:19-21) and contrast (the inadequacy of the physical temple points beyond itself to the eschatological reality).

Found via: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Direct Quotation
Connection Method(s): Longitudinal Theme + Contrast

Linked Mentions 2

Trajectory Tables 2