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 7:5 → Genesis 15:7

Allusion

Later text

Acts 7:5BSB

He gave him no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground. But God promised to give possession of the land to Abraham and his descendants, even though he did not yet have a child.

Earlier text

Genesis 15:7BSB

The LORD also told him, "I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess."

+ 3 more earlier texts

Earlier text

Exodus 6:8BSB

And I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD!'"

Earlier text

Deuteronomy 2:5BSB

Do not provoke them, for I will not give you any of their land, not even a footprint, because I have given Mount Seir to Esau as his possession.

Earlier text

Joshua 11:23BSB

So Joshua took the entire land, in keeping with all that the LORD had spoken to Moses. And Joshua gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to the allotments to their tribes. Then the land had rest from war.

Walk the Square · this video walks Acts 7:2-8 as a whole, from Acts 7.5 → Genesis 17.815:03

Significance

"He gave him no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground. But God promised to give possession of the land to Abraham and his descendants, even though he did not yet have a child" (Acts 7:5). Stephen presses the gap between promise and possession: the father of the faithful owned nothing of the land God swore to give (Genesis 15:7) and had no heir. The covenant lived entirely on God's pledge and required faith to bridge the delay. This is Stephen's answer to those who idolize "this holy place" — the land was always held by promise, a sacramental pledge of a greater inheritance. Abraham looked past Canaan to "the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God" (Hebrews 11:10); and the land promise widens in Christ, who makes his people "heir of the world" (Romans 4:13) and co-heirs of the new creation, the inheritance that can never be lost.

Found via: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Promise-Fulfillment

Linked Mentions 1

Trajectory Tables 1

Abraham Trajectory Table