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

Psalms 51:16-17 → Psalms 1:4

Echo

Later text

Psalms 51:16-17BSB

For You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; You take no pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

Earlier text

Psalms 1:4BSB

Not so the wicked! For they are like chaff driven off by the wind.

Significance

Psalm 51:17 declares "a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise (לֹא תִבְזֶה, lo tivzeh)" — the penitent sinner's sacrifice. Psalm 1:4 describes the wicked as "chaff driven off by the wind" — crushed, weightless, dispersed. The echo between the two psalms lies in the shared imagery of brokenness: the wicked are broken and scattered involuntarily, while the repentant sinner offers voluntary brokenness before God. One form of being "crushed" leads to destruction (Psalm 1's chaff); the other form leads to restoration (Psalm 51's contrite heart). David's penitential theology transforms what is catastrophic for the wicked into a means of grace for the repentant.

Found via: John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible (1763)
Reference Type: Echo
Connection Method(s): Contrast — Psalm 1:4's wicked, "chaff driven off by the wind," and Psalm 51:17's penitent, whose broken and contrite heart God will not despise, set two brokennesses against each other: involuntary crushing unto scattering versus voluntary contrition unto restoration — a contrast resolved at the cross, where the One crushed for sinners makes the broken heart the very sacrifice God receives.