Scripture Quoted Within Scripture

Matthew tells how Mary, engaged to Joseph, was found to be with child before they came together. Joseph planned to end the engagement quietly. An angel told him in a dream not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, because the child was from the Holy Spirit, and that he should name him Yeshua.

Matthew then says this happened to fulfil what the Lord spoke through the prophet, and quotes Isaiah 7:14: the virgin will be with child and bear a son, and they will call him Immanuel, “God with us.”

In Isaiah 7, the words were spoken to King Ahaz of Judah, who was afraid of an attack by Syria and Israel. Isaiah told him to ask God for a sign. When Ahaz refused, Isaiah said God would give a sign anyway, and spoke of the child named Immanuel.

Wise men from the east came to Jerusalem asking where the newborn king of the Jews was. King Herod called the chief priests and scribes and asked where the Christ, the promised king, was to be born. They answered: in Bethlehem of Judea, “for thus it is written through the prophet.”

They quoted Micah 5:2. In Micah the words come in a passage about a ruler of Israel who would come from Bethlehem, David’s home town. The words in Matthew are close but not the same, and the card shows where they differ.

After the wise men left, an angel warned Joseph in a dream to flee to Egypt with Mary and the child, because Herod wanted to kill him. They stayed in Egypt until Herod died.

Matthew says this fulfilled what the Lord spoke through the prophet: “Out of Egypt did I call my son.” The words are from Hosea 11:1. In Hosea, the son is Israel, whom God brought out of Egypt in the exodus. Matthew applies the same words to Yeshua coming back from Egypt.

After his baptism, Yeshua went into the wilderness and fasted forty days and forty nights. Afterwards he was hungry. The tempter came and said: if you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread.

Yeshua answered with Deuteronomy 8:3. In Deuteronomy, Moses reminds Israel of their forty years in the desert, when God let them be hungry and then fed them with manna, to teach them that man does not live by bread alone.

All three of Yeshua’s answers in the wilderness come from Deuteronomy 6 and 8, the chapters where Moses speaks about Israel’s time of testing in the desert.

For the second test, the devil took Yeshua to the holy city and set him on the highest point of the temple. He said: if you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, and then he quoted Scripture himself: “for it is written,” God will give his angels charge over you, and they will catch you.

The words are from Psalm 91, a psalm about God’s protection of the one who trusts him. The devil quotes verses 11 and 12, but leaves out one line: “To keep thee in all thy ways.”

Yeshua answered the devil’s second test with another verse: “Again it is written, Thou shalt not make trial of the Lord thy God.”

The words are from Deuteronomy 6:16. Moses goes on: “as ye tempted him in Massah.” Massah was the place in the desert where Israel had no water and demanded that Moses prove God was among them (Exodus 17).

For the third test, the devil showed Yeshua all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and said: all this I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me. Yeshua answered: “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” Then the devil left him.

The words are from Deuteronomy 6:13, where Moses warns Israel not to forget God when they come into a rich land, and not to follow other gods.

When Yeshua came into Jerusalem before the Passover, he went into the temple and drove out the people buying and selling there, and overturned the tables of the money-changers. He said: “It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer: but ye make it a den of robbers.”

His words join two prophets. The first half is from Isaiah 56:7, where God promises that foreigners who join themselves to him will be welcome in his house of prayer, “for all peoples.” The second half is from Jeremiah 7:11, where Jeremiah, standing at the temple gate, warns people who did evil all week and then came to the temple feeling safe.

In the temple, a lawyer, an expert in the Law, tested Yeshua with a question: which is the great commandment in the Law?

Yeshua answered with Deuteronomy 6:5, love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and said this is the first and great commandment. Then he added a second, from Leviticus 19:18: love your neighbour as yourself. He said the whole Law and the Prophets hang on these two.

Deuteronomy 6:5 is part of the Shema, the words beginning “Hear, O Israel” that Jews still recite every morning and evening.

Teaching in the temple, Yeshua asked a question of his own. The scribes said the Christ, the promised king, would be the son of David. But David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, wrote in Psalm 110: “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand.” If David calls him Lord, how can he be his son? The crowd listened gladly.

Psalm 110 is a psalm of David about a king God seats at his right hand. It is quoted again in Acts 2, when Peter speaks at Pentecost, and in Hebrews 1.

In the synagogue at Nazareth, Yeshua stood up to read and was handed the scroll of Isaiah. He found Isaiah 61 and read: the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives. Then he rolled up the scroll, sat down, and said: “To-day hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears.”

In Isaiah 61, the speaker is one anointed by God to bring good news to the poor, comfort to those who mourn, and freedom to captives.

Two differences can be seen side by side. Luke’s wording includes “recovering of sight to the blind,” which is not in the ASV’s Isaiah 61. And Yeshua stopped reading in the middle of Isaiah 61:2, before the words “and the day of vengeance of our God.”

Yeshua was crucified on the day before a high sabbath. The Jewish leaders asked Pilate to have the legs of the crucified men broken, so they would die quickly and the bodies could be taken down before the sabbath. The soldiers broke the legs of the two men crucified with him. When they came to Yeshua, he was already dead, so they did not break his legs.

John says this happened so that the Scripture would be fulfilled: “A bone of him shall not be broken.” The words are from the law of the Passover lamb in Exodus 12:46: none of its bones was to be broken. The ASV’s margin also points to Numbers 9:12 and Psalm 34:20.

Instead of breaking his legs, one soldier pierced Yeshua’s side with a spear, and blood and water came out. John says the one who saw it bore witness, and then quotes another scripture: “They shall look on him whom they pierced.”

The words are from Zechariah 12:10. There God says he will pour out a spirit of grace on Jerusalem, and they will look on the one they pierced and mourn for him like an only son.

When Judas saw that Yeshua had been condemned, he was filled with regret. He brought the thirty pieces of silver back to the chief priests and said he had betrayed innocent blood. They would not take it back. He threw the silver down in the temple and went and hanged himself.

The chief priests said the money could not go into the treasury, because it was the price of blood. They used it to buy the potter’s field as a burial place for foreigners. Matthew says this fulfilled what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, and gives words about thirty pieces of silver and the potter’s field.

The words closest to Matthew’s are in Zechariah 11, where the prophet is paid thirty pieces of silver and told to throw it to the potter in the house of God. Jeremiah also goes to a potter’s house (Jeremiah 18) and buys a field (Jeremiah 32). The ASV’s margin points to Zechariah. The card shows the passages; it takes no side on how they connect.

At the start of his letter to the Romans, Paul states his main subject: the gospel reveals a righteousness from God, from faith to faith. Then he backs it up: “as it is written, But the righteous shall live by faith.”

The words are from Habakkuk 2:4. Habakkuk had complained to God that the wicked were winning. God answered that the proud man is not upright, but the righteous man shall live by his faith, or, as the ASV’s margin reads, by his faithfulness. Paul quotes the same verse again in Galatians 3:11, and Hebrews quotes it in 10:38.

In Romans 4, Paul asks how Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, was made right with God. He answers with Scripture: “For what saith the scripture? And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.” Paul points out that this was said before Abraham was circumcised.

The words are from Genesis 15:6. God had brought Abraham outside at night and told him to count the stars, saying his descendants would be as many. Abraham was old and had no son, but he believed God. The same verse is quoted again in Galatians 3:6 and James 2:23.

In Galatians, Paul writes to churches being told that Gentile believers must keep the Law of Moses. In chapter 3 he says that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us, “for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.”

The words come from Deuteronomy 21:23, a law about a man executed for a capital crime whose body was hung on a tree. The law says the body must not stay there overnight, but be buried the same day, for one who is hanged is accursed of God.

1 Corinthians 15 is Paul’s long chapter on the resurrection of the dead. He ends it by saying that when the body that dies puts on what cannot die, then the saying that is written will come to pass: “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?”

He joins two prophets. The first line is from Isaiah 25:8, a promise that God will swallow up death forever and wipe away tears from all faces. The second is from Hosea 13:14. The ASV’s margins name both.

Hebrews 10 argues that the sacrifices of animals under the Law could never fully take away sins. To support this, the writer quotes Psalm 40 and applies its words to Christ coming into the world: sacrifice and offering you did not want, but a body you prepared for me.

In the Hebrew of Psalm 40, as the ASV translates it, the line reads differently: “Mine ears hast thou opened.” The Greek Old Testament reads “but a body hast thou prepared me.” Hebrews follows the Greek wording. The card shows the Hebrews passage, the Psalm, and the Greek.

Peter writes to believers scattered across Asia Minor. In chapter 1 he tells them they have been born again of seed that does not perish, through the word of God, and then quotes Isaiah: all flesh is like grass, and its glory like the flower of grass; the grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord abides for ever.

In Isaiah 40, these words open Isaiah’s words of comfort to Jerusalem, when a voice is told to cry out that all people are like grass, but the word of God stands forever.