Later text
Acts 9:15BSB
“Go!” said the Lord. “This man is My chosen instrument to carry My name before the Gentiles and their kings, and before the people of Israel.
Intertextuality Pair
Acts 9:15 → Jeremiah 22:28
Echo
Earlier text
Is this man Coniah a despised and shattered pot, a jar that no one wants? Why are he and his descendants hurled out and cast into a land they do not know?
+ 1 more earlier text
Earlier text
This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “Go down at once to the potter’s house, and there I will reveal My message to you.” So I went down to the potter’s house and saw him working at the wheel. But the vessel that he was shaping from the clay became flawed in his hand; so he formed it into another vessel, as it seemed best for him to do. Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, “O house of Israel, declares the LORD, can I not treat you as this potter treats his clay? Just like clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel. At any time I might announce that a nation or kingdom will be uprooted, torn down, and destroyed. But if that nation I warned turns from its evil, then I will relent of the disaster I had planned to bring. And if at another time I announce that I will build up and establish a nation or kingdom, and if it does evil in My sight and does not listen to My voice, then I will relent of the good I had intended for it.
Significance
The Lord answers Ananias's fear by naming Saul "a chosen instrument [skeuos eklogēs] of Mine to carry My name before the Gentiles and kings" — literally "a vessel of election." The vessel imagery runs deep in Israel's Scriptures: a vessel may be a despised, broken pot no one wants (Jer 22:28, of Coniah), or clay refashioned by the potter's sovereign hand (Jer 18:1-10). Saul the persecutor is a marred vessel remade for honor. Christ-terminus: it is God's electing choice, not Saul's worth, that makes the vessel — and the treasure the vessel is made to bear is the name of the risen Christ, carried to the nations. As Paul would later write, "we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us" (2 Cor 4:7): the glory is Christ's, and the vessel exists to display it.
- Found via
- G.K. Beale & D.A. Carson, Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament
- Reference Type
- Echo
- Connection Method(s)
- Analogy