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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.

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Intertextuality Pair

Romans 2:25-29 → Deuteronomy 10:16

Allusion

Later text

Romans 2:25BSB

Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision.

Earlier text

Deuteronomy 10:16BSB

Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and stiffen your necks no more.

+ 2 more earlier texts

Earlier text

Jeremiah 4:4BSB

Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and remove the foreskins of your hearts, O men of Judah and people of Jerusalem. Otherwise, My wrath will break out like fire and burn with no one to extinguish it, because of your evil deeds.”

Earlier text

Leviticus 26:41BSB

and I acted with hostility toward them and brought them into the land of their enemies—and if their uncircumcised hearts will be humbled and they will make amends for their iniquity,

Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square13:51

Significance

Paul's declaration that "circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code" (Romans 2:29) takes up Moses' imperative in Deuteronomy 10:16, "Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and stiffen your necks no more" — the demand for an inward circumcision that the outward sign could only picture. What Deuteronomy 10:16 commanded and Israel could not perform, God accomplishes by the Spirit in those united to Christ, so that the eschatological inward reality surpasses the outward sign; the imperative is answered by the divine promise of Deuteronomy 30:6 and declared fulfilled at Romans 2:29. Text-form note: this is a Hebrew-idiom allusion, not a Septuagintal citation — Paul's περιτομὴ καρδίας ("circumcision of the heart") follows the Hebrew idiom of Deuteronomy 10:16 (mul + orlah + lebab, "circumcise the foreskin of the heart"), not the LXX, which renders that clause with the single compound σκληροκαρδία ("hardness of heart"); the shared-lexeme grid across Romans 2:25-29 and Deuteronomy 10:16 in the Greek is zero.

Found via: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Promise-Fulfillment + Typology + Contrast

Linked Mentions 3

Intertextuality Pairs 2

Trajectory Tables 1

Circumcision (Circumcision of the Heart) Trajectory Table