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.

New to a term? The Glossary explains every abbreviation and term on the site in plain words.

Intertextuality Pair

Acts 7:6-7 → Genesis 15:13-14

Quotation

Later text

Acts 7:6-7BSB

God told him that his descendants would be foreigners in a strange land, and that they would be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. ‘But I will punish the nation that enslaves them,’ God said, ‘and afterward they will come forth and worship Me in this place.’

Earlier text

Genesis 15:13-14BSB

Then the LORD said to Abram, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will judge the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will depart with many possessions.

+ 1 more earlier text

Earlier text

Exodus 3:12BSB

"I will surely be with you," God said, "and this will be the sign to you that I have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, all of you will worship God on this mountain."

Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square8:16

Significance

God's word to Abraham foretold the whole arc of exile and rescue: "his descendants would be foreigners in a strange land, and... enslaved and mistreated four hundred years," after which "'I will punish the nation that enslaves them... and afterward they will come forth and worship Me in this place'" (Acts 7:6-7; Genesis 15:13-14). Stephen shows that the bondage was no surprise but was written into the covenant, and that its appointed end was worship — deliverance for devotion. God ordains both the descent into affliction and the exodus out of it, and orders both toward a people gathered to serve him. The exile-and-return pattern sealed to Abraham anticipates the greater bondage and the greater exodus: Christ redeems a people out of slavery to sin that they might at last worship God with unveiled faces, the true "coming forth" the pattern always intended.

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

Linked Mentions 1

Trajectory Tables 1

Abraham Trajectory Table