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 7:60 → 2 Chronicles 24:22

Echo

Later text

Acts 7:60BSB

Falling on his knees, he cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

Earlier text

2 Chronicles 24:22BSB

Thus King Joash failed to remember the kindness that Zechariah’s father Jehoiada had extended to him. Instead, Joash killed Jehoiada’s son. As he lay dying, Zechariah said, “May the LORD see this and call you to account.”

Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square11:38

Significance

As he is stoned, Stephen prays, "'Lord, do not hold this sin against them'" (Acts 7:60) — and Luke frames the scene against the last martyrdom recorded in the Hebrew canon. Zechariah son of Jehoiada, stoned in the temple court by order of the king, died crying, "'May the LORD see this and call you to account'" (2 Chronicles 24:22). The two deaths are deliberate opposites: the old-covenant martyr calls down vengeance; the Christian martyr, conformed to his crucified Lord, calls down forgiveness. Stephen's prayer is the echo of Calvary — "Father, forgive them" (Luke 23:34) — proof that the grace of the Righteous One had so filled his witness that he could pray for his killers as his Lord prayed for his. The contrast measures the difference Christ makes: where the law's last martyr could only invoke justice, the gospel's first martyr, beholding the glory of the forgiving Christ, becomes like him even in death — the surest sign that Stephen had been transformed into the image he beheld (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Found via: G.K. Beale & D.A. Carson, Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament
Reference Type: Echo
Connection Method(s): Contrast