Acts 7:59 → Psalms 31:5

Stephen's dying prayer "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" (Kyrie Iēsou, dexai to pneuma mou) draws on Ps 31:5 — "Into Your hand I commit my spirit" (be-yadkha aftid ruhi) — the same verse Jesus quoted from the cross (Luke 23:46), though significantly redirected. Where David addressed Yahweh and Jesus quoted the psalm to the Father, Stephen addresses Jesus directly, making this the first recorded prayer to the risen Christ and a striking implicit affirmation of Jesus' divinity. The parallel with Jesus' death is structural throughout the Stephen narrative (both pray for their killers, both commend their spirit, both are condemned on religious charges) — Luke clearly presents Stephen's death as a deliberate patterning after Jesus' death — the way the Davidic lament psalms testify first to the Messiah and then, by analogy, to the witnesses conformed to him.