Compare & Correlate

Biblical texts, side by side, with every row cited

Curated comparisons, not generated ones. Every cell cites the verse it comes from, and every entry says who makes the connection — because a comparison drawn as a table asserts a link before a word of it is read.

Four kinds, kept apart

• Measured. Numbers the texts state. Stated, derived and unstated are drawn apart.
• Lexical. A word the passages share, with its count in the annotated corpus.
• Explicit. A later verse makes this link, and it is printed on the arrow.
• Interpretive. No verse makes this link. It is a reading, and it is named.

The comparisons

• The three sanctuariesMeasured · Tabernacle, Solomon's house, Ezekiel's house

  The tabernacle, Solomon's house and the house Ezekiel is shown, drawn at one scale from the dimensions each text gives. Where a number is the text's own it is solid; where it is arithmetic over the text's numbers it is grey with its working printed; where the text gives nothing the plan is dashed and says so.

• The cubeMeasured · The inner room, 1 Kings 6, The city, Revelation 21

  The inner room of Solomon's house beside the city John is shown. Both are as long as they are broad and as high as they are long, and both are gold. No verse connects the two: Revelation never cites the room, so what is compared here is only what each text states, and the numbers are left in their own units.

• The feast calendarMeasured · Leviticus 23, Numbers 28–29, Deuteronomy 16, The New Testament

  The appointed days as three books of the law give them, and the New Testament days that fall on them. Leviticus and Numbers agree to the day; Deuteronomy names the feasts without numbering their days, and counts the fifty days from a different starting point. The New Testament column says only which day it was, in the words of the verse that says so.

• Tohu va-bohuLexical · Genesis 1, Jeremiah 4, Isaiah 34

  Two words that the corpus, not a reader, puts together. The pair occurs twice — the earth before the first word, and the land after judgement — and a third verse takes the two apart and uses them as builder's tools. The second of the pair occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible.

• The sabbath commandment, twiceLexical · Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5

  The fourth commandment as Exodus gives it and as Deuteronomy gives it. The days are counted identically; the words around them are not. One says remember, the other keep; one rests God on the seventh day, the other rests the servant; one grounds the day in creation, the other in the exodus. Each word is checked present, or absent, in the verses cited.

• Desire, three timesLexical · Genesis 3, Genesis 4, Song of Songs 7

  One word, three verses, and no others in the Hebrew Bible. The two in Genesis share a second word and a shape — a desire toward someone, and a ruling — and the Song of Songs keeps the desire and drops the rule. Who desires whom changes every time.

• Finishing the workLexical · Creation, The tabernacle, The temple

  One verb with one noun — he finished the work — in seven verses of the Hebrew Bible, and every one of them is about building for God: the heavens and the earth, the tabernacle, and the temple. Around the verb the three accounts share more: all the work seen, a finish marked by rest or by cloud, and a seven. No verse cites another; the vocabulary is what is shared.

• Wind over the watersLexical · Creation, Genesis 1, The flood, Genesis 8–9, The sea, Exodus 14–15

  The wind over the deep at the beginning, the wind that makes the flood waters subside, and the wind that splits the sea. The same few words recur — wind, the deep, the waters parted, the dry land, and in the flood the blessing given again word for word. No verse calls either a new creation; the vocabulary is what is shared.

• David's census, twiceLexical · 2 Samuel 24, 1 Chronicles 21

  The same event told twice, meeting on one verb. In Samuel the LORD, angry with Israel, incites David to count the people; in Chronicles it is Satan, or an adversary, who incites him. The numbers differ too. Every difference is drawn with both readings, and none is resolved.

• The Passover lambExplicit · Exodus 12, The gospels and the letters

  Exodus 12 beside the death of Jesus, with the linking verse printed on every row that has one. Four rows carry a New Testament verse that cites the Passover directly. The rest are read that way by a long tradition and are drawn without an arrow, because no verse makes the connection.

• The bronze serpentExplicit · Numbers 21, 2 Kings 18, John 3

  One object in three books. Moses makes it and whoever looks at it lives; Hezekiah breaks it because Israel has been burning incense to it; John names it as the pattern for the Son of Man lifted up. The two later texts name the earlier one, and those rows carry the linking verse. The rest are drawn without one.

• MelchizedekExplicit · Genesis 14, Psalm 110, Hebrews 7

  A king-priest who appears for three verses in Genesis, is named once more in a psalm, and is read at length in Hebrews. The psalm reads Genesis; Hebrews reads both, and builds its sharpest point on what Genesis does not say. Each arrow joins the two texts its verse joins.

• Bread from heavenExplicit · Exodus 16, John 6

  The manna of the wilderness, and the crowd at Capernaum quoting it. John 6 cites the bread from heaven, answers who gave it, and recalls that those who ate it died. Each of those rows carries the verse that makes the link.

• The rock that gave waterExplicit · Exodus 17 and Numbers 20, 1 Corinthians 10

  Water from the rock, twice in the wilderness — and Paul's sentence that the rock was Christ. The rock of Exodus and the rock of Numbers are different words; the rock that followed Israel is in neither, and that row is drawn without an arrow.

• The sign of JonahExplicit · Jonah 2–3, Matthew 12

  Three days and three nights in the fish, and Nineveh turning at Jonah's word — both cited by Jesus in Matthew 12 as the one sign that will be given. Two rows, two linking verses.

• The temple and the bodyExplicit · Psalm 69, John 2

  Jesus in the temple courts, as John tells it. One row cites the Psalms and carries the arrow. The saying about the temple raised in three days cites no Hebrew text at all: it is John who says what it meant, and that row is drawn without an arrow.

• Adam and ChristExplicit · Genesis 2–5, Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15

  Paul sets Adam and Christ side by side twice. In 1 Corinthians he quotes Genesis 2:7 and answers it; in Romans he names Adam and the death that came through him. Each row carries the verse that makes the link.

• Jacob's ladderExplicit · Genesis 28, John 1

  Jacob's dream at Bethel, and Jesus' promise to Nathanael. John keeps the angels ascending and descending and the opened heaven, and sets the Son of Man where the stairway stood. The stairway itself is a word used once in the Hebrew Bible.

• Elijah and Moses at the mountainExplicit · Moses, Exodus 33–34, Elijah, 1 Kings 19, Together, Malachi 3 and Mark 9

  Moses in the cleft of the rock and Elijah at the mouth of the cave, each on the mountain of God, each after forty days and forty nights, each as the LORD passes by. The shared words are checked and drawn without arrows. Two later texts name the pair together — Malachi and Mark — and those rows carry the linking verse.

• The binding of Isaac and the crossInterpretive · Genesis 22, The crucifixion, as the reading sets it

  Abraham's son, the wood laid on him, the lamb God will provide, the mountain — set beside the crucifixion by a reading as old as the second century. No verse makes that connection. One New Testament verse does read Genesis 22, of Isaac received back; it is shown, and it does not carry the rest.

• Joseph and JesusInterpretive · Genesis 37–50, The gospels, as the reading sets them

  The favoured son, hated by his brothers, stripped, sold for silver, counted among the condemned, and raised to save many. Christian readers since the early centuries have set Joseph's story beside the gospel's. No verse does: the one New Testament telling of Joseph draws no line to Jesus. The Genesis side is checked; the pairing is a tradition's.

• Rahab's scarlet cordInterpretive · Exodus 12, Joshua 2 and 6

  The scarlet cord in Rahab's window beside the blood on the doorposts in Egypt. The pairing is 1 Clement's, not scripture's: no verse makes it. The two chapters do share a sign asked for and given, a household kept inside, and a warning against going out of the door — and those words are checked. The colour is the tradition's.

• Ezekiel's house as the holy of holiesInterpretive · What the reading proposes, What Ezekiel says

  A reading that the whole of Ezekiel's temple complex is the inner room enlarged. Three of its rows are the text's own — the nested squares, and the inner room's name applied to the whole mountaintop — and one is contradicted by four verses. The identification itself is a tradition's, and is drawn as one.