They answered him, “He was a hairy man, and wearing a leather belt around his waist.” He said, “It is Elijah the Tishbite.”
⛓ Read 2 Kings 1 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.
Allusion2
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
John's garb of camel's hair and a leather belt around the waist deliberately mirrors Elijah, 'a hairy man with a leather belt around his waist' (2 Kings 1:8 LXX, zōnēn dermatinēn perthan identical phrase). High volume in a distinctive sartorial detail; recurrence at Mark 9:13 ('Elijah has come') confirms the identification. Coherence is strong: John is the returning Elijah of Malachi.
High confidenceJohn's garb — clothing 'of camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist' — verbally matches the description of Elijah as 'a hairy man, with a leather belt around his waist.' Strong Volume on the distinctive belt phrase; signals John as the returning-Elijah figure (cf. Mal 4:5; Matt 11:14, 17:12).
High confidenceEcho2
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
Elijah 'a hairy man, with a leather belt' grounds the John-as-Elijah figure and the contrast with kingly 'soft clothing'; cf. Matthew's own description of John's garb.
Medium confidenceElijah's wilderness/garb profile underlies why John is asked whether he is Elijah (v.21). Faint here (John's Gospel omits the camel-hair description) but coheres with the Elijah typology; low and somewhat contested in John specifically.
Low confidence