When the New Testament authors quote the Old Testament, they do so in ways that are both rich and rigorous — direct citation, allusion, typology, recurring patterns, and fulfillment within redemptive history. This article helps readers understand how the apostles honored the original meaning of the Old Testament while also revealing deeper significance in the light of Christ. Along the way, it guards against the common misreading that the New Testament writers were simply taking texts out of context.
This article is translated and adapted from the ESV Study Bible feature article "How the New Testament Quotes and Interprets the Old Testament."
C. S. Lewis once observed that one of the rewards of reading the Old Testament regularly is that "you keep on discovering that what the New Testament is almost a patchwork of quotations from it." Most serious Bible readers would agree. Yet among New Testament interpreters, there is considerable debate about exactly how the New Testament authors understood the Old Testament texts they were quoting. The questions at stake include: Did the New Testament authors respect the original meaning of the Old Testament passages they cited? Did they assign new meanings to those passages? If so, how closely do those new meanings relate to the original? When a passage is quoted, does the author have the whole surrounding context in view, or is he simply making use of a single verse? What textual form did the New Testament authors use—the Hebrew original, the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament), or some other Greek version? Did they rely on the Greek translation even where it does not accurately render the Hebrew?
This brief article cannot address all of these questions comprehensively, nor does it imply that all faithful interpreters—or even all contributors to this study Bible—hold identical views on every point. The aim is simply to offer a perspective that does justice to both the New Testament and the Old.
The first thing to notice is that New Testament authors cite the Old Testament in a wide variety of ways. They may quote directly (e.g., Matt. 1:23 quoting Isa. 7:14); they may allude without quoting (e.g., John 1:1–5 echoing Genesis 1); they may use Old Testament vocabulary whose meaning has been shaped by its Old Testament usage (e.g., "the righteousness of God"); they may appeal to grand Old Testament themes (such as monotheism and creation); or they may invoke the overarching narrative framework of the Old Testament (e.g., Rom. 1:1–6).
Second, there is no reason to expect a single explanation to cover every instance of New Testament use of the Old Testament. An author may intend to identify the one meaning of an Old Testament text, or he may use that text as an illustration or pattern to illuminate the point he is making. He may draw a moral lesson from an event (e.g., Mark 2:25–26), or he may find an analogy between his own readers and ancient Israel (e.g., 1 Cor. 10:6–11). He may be arguing that Gentile Christians have inherited Israel's privileges (1 Pet. 2:9–10), or explaining why Christians are no longer bound by certain Old Testament regulations (e.g., Mark 7:19; Eph. 2:19). When Paul describes his own calling in language that echoes "the servant of Yahweh" (Gal. 1:15, echoing Isa. 49:1), and since Paul clearly understood Isaiah's servant as a messianic figure (see Acts 13:47), the most natural reading is that Paul is drawing a comparison between his own calling and the servant's—not claiming to be that servant himself.
This area generates the least controversy. In general, when New Testament authors cite the Old Testament in Greek, the form they use corresponds broadly to what we find in printed editions of the Septuagint (see the article on "The Septuagint"). In some places the New Testament citation differs slightly from the Septuagint: the author may have adjusted the wording to fit his syntax, adapted it for another purpose, quoted from memory, or reflected a textual variant. In other places, the New Testament author appears to correct the Septuagint toward the Hebrew: for example, "grieved" in Ephesians 4:30 is closer to the Hebrew of Isaiah 63:10 than the Septuagint's "provoked to anger." The phrase "full of grace and truth" in John 1:14 is most likely a free rendering of "abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness" (Exod. 34:6).
Many Hebrew scholars regard the Septuagint as valuable but also as containing notable weaknesses. Translation quality varies considerably depending on the type of material (poetry is harder to translate than narrative), the skill of the translator, and the translator's aims (the translator of Proverbs, for instance, appears to have deliberately adapted Hebrew wisdom literature for the highly Hellenized culture of Alexandria, at some cost to fidelity to the Hebrew). More importantly, there is no evidence that any imprecision in translation affects the New Testament's use of any specific Septuagint passage—the point being argued from a given verse typically falls precisely where the translation is sufficiently accurate.
We should not conclude, therefore, that the New Testament authors' use of a Greek translation means they were indifferent to the original intent of the Old Testament authors.
Several New Testament passages reflect on the basic posture Christians should take toward the Old Testament. In Romans 1:1–6, Paul describes "the gospel of God" as that which God "promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures." What follows—the account of Jesus being publicly enthroned as David's heir through the resurrection, and of Paul's apostolic mission as an extension of Jesus' purpose "to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations"—makes clear that Paul understands the victorious events of Jesus' life and the witness of the early Christians as the fulfillment of what the Old Testament had foretold. This is precisely the kind of reading the Old Testament itself invites. Later in the same letter (Rom. 15:4), Paul says: "For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction." He then (15:9–13) cites several Old Testament passages expressing the eschatological hope that the nations would receive light and worship alongside Israel's faithful remnant—and he sees the mixed Jewish-and-Gentile congregation of Christians as the fulfillment of that hope.
In 1 Corinthians 10:1, Paul refers to Old Testament events by saying "our fathers" experienced them. Since the Corinthian church included a significant proportion of Gentile converts, Paul is treating Gentile Christians as those who have been "grafted in" (Rom. 11:17) to the olive tree—that is, the community of God's people (cf. Jer. 11:16)—and therefore as fully equal heirs of the story alongside Jewish Christians. After listing examples of how God judged the unfaithful among his ancient people (1 Cor. 10:6–10), Paul explains: "Now these things happened to them as examples, and they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come." God expects those who call themselves Christians to ensure their faith is genuine, just as he required of his people in the era of the Pentateuch.
Hebrews 11 sets before its readers (likely a predominantly Jewish-Christian audience) the great heroes of faith from the Old Testament, showing that they too must persevere in faith as the ancients did.
In Luke 24:25–27, 44–47, Jesus "beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, explained to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." Luke does not tell us the specific content of that Bible study. Some Christian interpreters take this to mean that a foreshadowing of some aspect of Jesus' work can be found in every part of the Old Testament. Others suggest it is sufficient to recognize two things: first, that certain specific texts genuinely predict the Messiah's work; and second, that the overall trajectory of the Old Testament story points toward Jesus—who suffers first and then enters his glory, thereby opening the age in which the nations receive God's light (Luke 24:47, "to all nations").
When the apostles applied the Old Testament to New Testament realities, they were following a long tradition of citing earlier Scripture and using methods that can already be found within the Old Testament itself. Old Testament authors could allude to earlier texts and develop them (e.g., Psalms 8 and 104 draw on Genesis 1–2); they could allude to earlier texts and give them sharper focus (e.g., Ps. 72:17 specifies the more general promise of Gen. 22:18 to the house of David); they could identify a promise (e.g., Dan. 9:2 finds in Jer. 25:12 a promise about the duration of Babylonian rule); they could recognize recurring patterns in God's ways of dealing with his people (e.g., many psalms echo the description of God's character in Exod. 34:6–7); and they could apply earlier texts to new situations (e.g., Neh. 8:14–17 is often seen as combining Lev. 23:39–42 and Deut. 16:13–15 and applying them in a new context; compare also the striking contrast between Jer. 22:24–27 and Hag. 2:23).
New Testament authors exhibit these same patterns because they are convinced that Christians are heirs of Israel's story; they also exhibit additional patterns because they are convinced that Jesus' resurrection has inaugurated a new era—the messianic age foretold by the prophets, the "last days." These authors understood themselves as God-authorized interpreters, faithfully proclaiming his revelation in this new chapter of God's story with his people.
Early Christian missionaries entered synagogues and argued from the Old Testament Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ (see Acts 17:1–3; 18:26–28). This means their arguments were publicly verifiable from the texts themselves—not merely private insights. To ask others to see something in a text that is simply not there would be intellectually dishonest. Luke commends the Berean Jews for examining the Scriptures daily to see whether what Paul and Silas were saying was true (Acts 17:11). This shows that the New Testament welcomes critical engagement with its use of the Old Testament and does not rely solely on an "insider" perspective.
In categorizing these uses, the key questions are:
The categories below are intended as a broad, heuristic framework. Nothing replaces careful, passage-by-passage study.
In many cases, New Testament authors understand an Old Testament text as a promise about the direction of the story and identify a specific event as the fulfillment (or partial fulfillment) of that promise. For example, Matthew 12:17–21 understands the "servant of Yahweh" in Isaiah 42:1–3 as the Messiah, and identifies Jesus as the promised figure. Similarly, in Romans 15:12, Paul sees the spread of Christian faith among the Gentiles as the realization of the hope expressed in Isaiah 11:1–10.
This use is commonly called typology: patterns found in the Old Testament help Christians understand their situation in Christ. For example, the innocent substitute who bears guilt in the sin offering or guilt offering illuminates how Jesus' sacrifice benefits believers (see the note on Isa. 53:7—this is likely the background to John 1:29).
Sometimes a New Testament author finds a similarity between his own situation and an earlier one, and draws a principle from the Old Testament text to address the new context. The examples from Mark 2:25–26 and 1 Corinthians 10:6–10 mentioned above illustrate this.
When an author uses analogy in this way, he is not making a claim about the original meaning of the Old Testament text—yet the analogy still respects that original meaning. For instance, in Matthew 21:42, Jesus uses Psalm 118:22–23 (about "the stone that the builders rejected") to describe the Jewish leaders' rejection of him. While many understand this as a messianic prophecy, Jesus' primary point is that the Jewish leaders who reject him are—by analogy—like the world powers that despised Israel: both wrong and tragic (Matt. 21:41).
Understanding "analogy" in this way helps with some of the more challenging New Testament passages. In 1 Corinthians 9:9 and 1 Timothy 5:18, Paul cites the Old Testament law against muzzling an ox while it treads grain (Deut. 25:4) as support for financially providing for those in ministry. The Old Testament text is grounded in the principle of treating working animals humanely; Paul's application seems to rest on a "how much more" argument—if this is true for animals, how much more for those who serve us with God's word. In Galatians 4:21–31, Paul constructs an "allegory" from the Genesis story of Hagar and Sarah to urge his readers to reject the false teachers. We need not think he is uncovering some hidden extra meaning in Genesis, nor that he is ignoring the original intent; he is simply comparing those who follow his message to "children of promise" (born supernaturally, like Isaac) and those who follow the false teachers to those "born according to the flesh" (like Ishmael).
As the article on "Old Testament Theology" notes, Old Testament eschatology looks forward to a coming age in which the Messiah will lead his people to bring light to the nations. The New Testament's position is that this age began with Jesus' resurrection and ascension. These are different chapters in the unfolding story of God's work in the world, but they display continuity because the same God is at work—saving people in the same way (Rom. 4:1–8), grafting believing Gentiles into the olive tree of his people (Rom. 11:17), and restoring the image of God in them. Jewish and Gentile Christians together therefore share the privileges of Israel's calling (e.g., 1 Pet. 2:9–10, echoing Exod. 19:5–6 and other texts). The Ten Commandments provide moral guidance for Christians (Rom. 13:8–10). The same "righteousness of God"—his uprightness and his faithfulness to his promises—that the Old Testament celebrates is the very basis on which God sent Jesus (Rom. 1:17).
This category is related to the previous one and reflects the transition between eras in redemptive history. For example, God's faithful people are no longer required to observe the Old Testament dietary laws, because those laws served to distinguish Israel from the surrounding nations (Lev. 20:24–26; cf. Acts 10:9–23). Other aspects of the Sinai covenant likewise no longer apply directly to God's people, such as the sacrificial system and the Jerusalem-centered theocracy.
Psalm 72:17 does not alter the promise of Genesis 22:18—"in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed"—but it sharpens the focus of how that promise will be fulfilled, by anchoring it to the house of David. Similarly, Isaiah 52:13–53:12 unmistakably portrays the Messiah's career as one of rejection and humiliation followed by vindication and triumph. As the note on Isaiah 53:10 explains, death is clearly not the Messiah-servant's final word; yet resurrection is not explicitly stated there (though it now seems the most natural inference). Thus 1 Corinthians 15:3–4 can say: "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures" (most likely echoing Isa. 53:10), and also that he "was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures" (a development or clarification of Isa. 53:10). The assumption underlying these examples is that the story is progressing, and that God introduces new events and new insights along the way (in Ps. 72:17, through the Davidic covenant; in 1 Cor. 15:4, through the resurrection of Jesus).
Christians use the Latin term sensus plenior ("fuller meaning") to describe cases where the New Testament appears to find a meaning in an Old Testament text that goes well beyond what the original author consciously intended—more than simple "development." Given that God both orchestrates historical events and inspires the biblical authors as his faithful interpreters, it is entirely reasonable to acknowledge that such cases exist. Caution is wise, however: in many instances, what appears to be sensus plenior turns out to be a misreading of either the Old Testament text or the New Testament's use of it. There are, nonetheless, genuine examples where a New Testament author does seem to be doing this. In John 1:1–5, for instance, John describes the Word as a divine person who participated in creation, clearly echoing Genesis 1:1–2:3 while seeing in it something Moses did not explicitly state. Yet this does not contradict Genesis. We might imagine Moses reading John's Gospel and saying, "I never thought of it that way, but now that you put it like that, I can see where you're getting it—and I agree"—meaning he would not feel his original intent had been distorted. A sensus plenior that is entirely disconnected from the original meaning, however, would be indefensible.
Matthew 2:15 is often cited as an example of sensus plenior, since Matthew says the holy family's flight to Egypt and return to the land "fulfilled" Hosea 11:1: "Out of Egypt I called my son." Was Matthew finding a messianic meaning in Hosea that no one had previously seen? Most likely not. The better explanation is that Matthew found in Hosea a concise summary of the Exodus event, with the key word "son." One of Matthew's themes is that Jesus proves himself to be the true Messiah—the embodiment of Israel (represented by the Davidic king)—because he faithfully embodies everything Israel was called to be (and failed to be). Jesus' experience therefore "fulfills" the Exodus pattern. This is, in fact, a case of typology—pattern and fulfillment.
New Testament authors frequently apply to Jesus Old Testament texts that originally referred to Yahweh, the God of Israel. For example, Hebrews 1:10–12 applies Psalm 102:25–27—which speaks of God's eternity—to Jesus. This is not because the psalm itself is a direct messianic prophecy, but because the New Testament authors affirm that Jesus is Yahweh incarnate (cf. John 1:1–14). The New Testament use of these texts is therefore fully consistent with their original meaning—they describe the Lord—while recognizing that the same descriptions apply to Jesus, because he is, equally with the Father, the Lord.
In all of the cases above, the New Testament authors understood themselves as the rightful heirs and faithful interpreters of the Old Testament.
💬 After reading this article, if you have any thoughts or questions, you are welcome to ask Pastor Bond:
- "Does the New Testament sometimes take Old Testament texts out of context?"
- "What exactly is 'typology'?"
- "How does understanding this help me read the Bible on my own?"