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 8:23 → Deuteronomy 29:18

Allusion

Later text

Acts 8:23BSB

For I see that you are poisoned by bitterness and captive to iniquity."

Earlier text

Deuteronomy 29:18BSB

Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the LORD our God to go and worship the gods of those nations. Make sure there is no root among you that bears such poisonous and bitter fruit,

+ 3 more earlier texts

Earlier text

Isaiah 58:6BSB

Isn’t this the fast that I have chosen: to break the chains of wickedness, to untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and tear off every yoke?

Earlier text

Lamentations 3:15BSB

He has filled me with bitterness; He has intoxicated me with wormwood.

Earlier text

Proverbs 5:4BSB

in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a double-edged sword.

Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square13:34

Significance

Peter reads Simon's condition in the covenant's own diagnostic language: "I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity." Deuteronomy 29:18 warns of the covenant-breaker as "a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit," a heart secretly turning from the LORD to idols; the same bitter-wormwood imagery marks the way of death in the Wisdom and prophetic writings (Prov 5:4; Lam 3:15). Baptism has washed Simon's body but not loosed a heart still bound by sin. Christ-terminus: only the grace of Christ can loose "the bonds of wickedness" (Isa 58:6) and pull up the bitter root. The gospel Simon heard and the repentance Peter urges (v22) remain his one hope — the bond of iniquity that no ritual can break is broken by the Redeemer who sets captive hearts free.

Found via: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Analogy