Intertextuality Pair

Acts 8:20 → Daniel 2:5

Echo

Later text

Acts 8:20BSB

But Peter replied, "May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money!

Earlier text

Daniel 2:5BSB

The king replied to the astrologers, “My word is final: If you do not tell me the dream and its interpretation, you will be cut into pieces and your houses will be reduced to rubble.

Significance

When Simon offers money for the power to confer the Spirit, Peter's rebuke — "May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money!" — rings with the scriptural language of judgment on those who presume upon holy things (cf. the perishing pronounced in Dan 2:5). The gift of God stands utterly outside the marketplace; it cannot be purchased, and the attempt exposes a heart still in bondage. Christ-terminus: the Spirit is the free gift of the exalted Christ, who "received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and poured out" this grace (Acts 2:33). To try to trade in grace is to forfeit it, for the treasure held out in the gospel is Christ Himself — freely given to faith, never sold to money.

Found via
Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible (1834)
Reference Type
Echo
Connection Method(s)
Contrast (magic under sentence for reaching for what only God gives: Babylon's sorcerers face destruction because only "a God in heaven who reveals mysteries" can give what the king asks; Simon the sorcerer faces destruction for trying to buy "the gift of God")

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