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

Isaiah 38:21 → 2 Kings 20:7

Quotation

Later text

Isaiah 38:21BSB

Now Isaiah had said, "Prepare a lump of pressed figs and apply it to the boil, and he will recover."

Earlier text

2 Kings 20:7BSB

Then Isaiah said, "Prepare a poultice of figs." So they brought it and applied it to the boil, and Hezekiah recovered.

Significance

Both Isaiah 38:21 and 2 Kings 20:7 record Isaiah's instruction to apply a poultice of figs (דְּבֶלֶת תְּאֵנִים, develet te'enim) to Hezekiah's boil (שְׁחִין, shechin). The accounts are parallel but placed differently in each narrative: in 2 Kings 20, the fig remedy appears in chronological sequence within the story, while in Isaiah 38, it is appended after Hezekiah's psalm (38:9-20), almost as an afterthought. This placement difference reveals the literary priorities of each author — the Kings account prioritizes historical narrative flow, while Isaiah's account prioritizes the devotional response (the psalm) before returning to the practical details of the cure. Theologically, the fig poultice functions as a convergence of divine promise and natural means: God's word of healing precedes and validates the remedy, so that the cure's efficacy lies not in the figs themselves but in the divine promise accompanying them.

Found via: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Direct Quotation
Connection Method(s): Redemptive-Historical Progression — the same prescription (a lump of pressed figs for the boil) preserved in both canonical placements of one healing: Kings gives it in narrative sequence, Isaiah as a postscript after the psalm; two tellings of a single historical event in which the LORD's promissory word governs the ordinary means, each serving its book's placement of Hezekiah's deliverance within the advancing story of David's house.