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 8:21 → Deuteronomy 12:12

Echo

Later text

Acts 8:21BSB

You have no part or share in our ministry, because your heart is not right before God.

Earlier text

Deuteronomy 12:12BSB

And you shall rejoice before the LORD your God—you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, and the Levite within your gates, since he has no portion or inheritance among you.

+ 1 more earlier text

Earlier text

Psalms 78:37BSB

Their hearts were disloyal to Him, and they were unfaithful to His covenant.

Significance

Peter tells Simon, "You have no part or share [meris... klēros] in this ministry, for your heart is not right before God." The paired words echo the Deuteronomic language of "portion and inheritance" among the covenant people (Deut 12:12), while the diagnosis of the heart recalls the faithless whose "heart was not steadfast toward Him" (Ps 78:37). The one whose heart is false has no lot among the people of God. Christ-terminus: the true inheritance is not silver but God Himself — "the LORD is my chosen portion" (Ps 16:5) — received not by purchase or magic but by a heart set right through faith in Christ. Simon's exclusion is a warning and, in Peter's call to repent (v22), a door: the same grace that saves the whole heart is offered even to him.

Found via: John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible (1763)
Reference Type: Echo
Connection Method(s): Contrast