Later text
Acts 7:59BSB
While they were stoning him, Stephen appealed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
Intertextuality Pair
Echo
Later text
Acts 7:59BSB
While they were stoning him, Stephen appealed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
Earlier text
1 Kings 2:10BSB
Then David rested with his fathers and was buried in the City of David.
Earlier text
1 Kings 2:10BSB
Then David rested with his fathers and was buried in the City of David.
Earlier text
Psalms 31:5BSB
Into Your hands I commit my spirit; You have redeemed me, O LORD, God of truth.
"While they were stoning him, Stephen appealed, 'Lord Jesus, receive my spirit'" (Acts 7:59), and then "he fell asleep" (7:60) — the same gentle idiom Scripture uses for David, who "rested with his fathers" (1 Kings 2:10). Stephen's dying committal echoes the psalmist's "Into Your hand I commit my spirit" (Psalm 31:5), the very words Jesus spoke from the cross (Luke 23:46) — but where Jesus addressed the Father, Stephen addresses the risen Jesus, praying to Christ as to God. The violent death of the martyr is spoken of as falling asleep, robbed of its terror because the One who receives his spirit is the Lord who has himself conquered death. For those in Christ, dying is a committal into faithful hands and a sleep from which the Deliverer will wake them — the martyr's peace resting wholly on the exalted Christ he beholds.