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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

Ecclesiastes 3:20-21 → Genesis 3:19

Allusion

Later text

Ecclesiastes 3:20-21BSB

All go to one place; all come from dust, and all return to dust. Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and the spirit of the animal descends into the earth?

Earlier text

Genesis 3:19BSB

By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread, until you return to the ground—because out of it were you taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return."

Significance

Ecclesiastes 3:20 echoes Genesis 3:19 with the stark observation "all come from dust (עָפָר, 'aphar), and all return to dust (עָפָר)," applying the curse pronounced on Adam ("to dust you shall return," כִּי־עָפָר אַתָּה וְאֶל־עָפָר תָּשׁוּב) universally to both humans and animals. Qoheleth then presses the implication further than Genesis by asking "Who knows if the spirit (רוּחַ, ruach) of man rises upward and the spirit of the animal descends into the earth?" (3:21). This provocative question does not deny the distinction but challenges empirical certainty about it, functioning as a wisdom meditation on the observable consequences of the fall: from the vantage point of life "under the sun," the shared dusty fate of all creatures makes the Genesis curse painfully visible.

Found via: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Longitudinal Theme

Linked Mentions 2

Trajectory Tables 2