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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

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Intertextuality Pair

Hebrews 6:7-8 → Deuteronomy 29:23-27

Allusion

Later text

Hebrews 6:7-8BSB

For land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is tended receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless, and its curse is imminent. In the end it will be burned.

Earlier text

Deuteronomy 29:23-27BSB

All its soil will be a burning waste of sulfur and salt, unsown and unproductive, with no plant growing on it, just like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in His fierce anger. So all the nations will ask, 'Why has the LORD done such a thing to this land? Why this great outburst of anger?' And the people will answer, 'It is because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went and served other gods, and they worshiped gods they had not known—gods that the LORD had not given to them. Therefore the anger of the LORD burned against this land, and He brought upon it every curse written in this book.

Significance

The warning in Hebrews 6:7-8 that unfruitful land will be "burned" (kausin) echoes the covenant-curse landscape of Deuteronomy 29:23-27, where Moses describes the fate of a land whose people abandon God's covenant: "All its soil will be a burning waste of sulfur and salt, unsown and unproductive, with no plant growing on it, just like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah." The nations will ask, "Why has the LORD done such a thing to this land?" and the answer is covenant unfaithfulness (29:25-26). Hebrews applies this Deuteronomic covenant-curse imagery to those who have received new covenant blessings yet fall away: their spiritual condition mirrors the scorched, barren landscape that results from covenant violation. The analogy reinforces the gravity of apostasy — it is not merely personal failure but a reenactment of the covenant-breaking pattern that brought destruction on Israel's land.

Found via: G.K. Beale & D.A. Carson (eds.), Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Baker, 2007) — attribution only; TOSK's Hebrews 6:7-8 entries and Gill's and Henry's expositions were checked and do not draw the Deuteronomy 29:23-27 covenant-curse connection specifically (TOSK's nearest cross-reference is the adjacent Deuteronomy 29:28)
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Analogy

Linked Mentions 1

Trajectory Tables 1

Thorns and Thistles (Curse of Fruitlessness) Trajectory Table