I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.
⛓ Read Exodus 7 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion1
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
'Signs and wonders' (sēmeia kai terata, v. 12) is the fixed Septuagintal idiom for the LORD's mighty acts in Egypt. Its application to the apostles casts their ministry as a new exodus-scale display of divine power among the people.
Medium confidenceEcho6
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
The plea in v.30 that 'signs and wonders' be done evokes the fixed Exodus pairing of 'signs and wonders' worked by God's outstretched hand against Pharaoh (Exod 7:3 and throughout). Combined with 'stretch out your hand,' the language casts the apostolic mission in a new-Exodus, divine-deliverance key.
Medium confidence'I will multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt' — the foundational Exodus pairing of 'signs and wonders' that Acts 6:8 reuses for Stephen's ministry. Together with Deut 34:11 it locates Stephen in the line of Mosaic authentication by mighty deeds.
Medium confidence'Having worked wonders and signs in Egypt' echoes the LORD multiplying signs and wonders in the land of Egypt through Moses.
Medium confidencePaul appeals to 'signs and wonders and mighty works' as the credentials of an apostle, using the fixed OT formula for God's authenticating acts, as when the LORD multiplied 'my signs and my wonders' in Egypt. Faint but coherent: the sign-and-wonder pairing is the Deuteronomistic vocabulary of divine accreditation that Paul transfers to apostolic ministry.
Low confidence'I will harden Pharaoh's heart' continues the hardening motif that informs the God-sent delusion upon unbelievers; faint and analogical.
Low confidenceThe hardening-of-heart language evokes the Exodus Pharaoh tradition, where God hardens, or Pharaoh hardens, the heart against the works of God. Mark's opponents resist a manifest sign as Pharaoh resisted the plagues. Faint and thematic, marked contested.
Low confidence