Later text
Acts 9:2BSB
and requested letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any men or women belonging to the Way, he could bring them as prisoners to Jerusalem.
Intertextuality Pair
Acts 9:2 → Isaiah 40:3
Echo
Earlier text
A voice of one calling: "Prepare the way for the LORD in the wilderness; make a straight highway for our God in the desert. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill made low; the uneven ground will become smooth, and the rugged land a plain.
+ 3 more earlier texts
Earlier text
Hosea 14:9BSB
Whoever is wise, let him understand these things; whoever is discerning, let him know them. For the ways of the LORD are right, and the righteous walk in them but the rebellious stumble in them.
Earlier text
Then I said, “They are only the poor; they have played the fool, for they do not know the way of the LORD, the justice of their God. I will go to the powerful and speak to them. Surely they know the way of the LORD, the justice of their God.” But they too, with one accord, had broken the yoke and torn off the chains.
Earlier text
Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ Hear now, O house of Israel: Is it My way that is unjust? Is it not your ways that are unjust?
Significance
Luke's earliest name for the Christian movement is "the Way" (hē hodos) — those Saul sought to arrest were "any belonging to the Way." The self-designation draws on the deep OT stream of "the way of the LORD": the highway prepared in the wilderness for God's coming (Isa 40:3), the path of covenant faithfulness Israel abandoned (Jer 5:4-5), and the assurance that "the ways of the LORD are right, and the righteous walk in them" (Hos 14:9). To belong to the Way is to walk the LORD's own road. Christ-terminus: Jesus is Himself "the Way, and the Truth, and the Life" (John 14:6). The movement Saul set out to destroy is nothing less than the road to the Father opened in Christ — and on that very road to Damascus, the persecutor of the Way will be turned around and set walking in 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)
- Longitudinal Theme