When Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his donkey, and arose, and went home, to his city, and set his house in order, and hanged himself; and he died, and was buried in the tomb of his father.
⛓ Read 2 Samuel 17 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.
Ahithophel, the counselor who betrayed David, 'hanged himself' (apenxato) — the only other named suicide-by-hanging in the OT and the closest model for Judas, the betrayer of the Son of David, who 'hanged himself' (same Greek verb in Matthew). Typological betrayer-of-David's-son link.
Medium confidenceEcho2
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
Judas as the counselor-turned-traitor of Jesus faintly recalls Ahithophel, David's trusted counselor who betrayed him and then died by his own hand. Volume: low (Luke reports a different mode of death than the Matthean hanging); the link is typological — the betrayer of the anointed king meets a self-inflicted, ignominious end. Recurrence: Ahithophel was widely read as a type of the traitor, and Psalm 69/109 imprecations were associated with such figures. Coherence good but verbal volume slight, hence echo/low.
Low confidenceAhithophel the betrayer hangs himself once his counsel fails, a fate the Synoptic Judas shares; the Kidron-crossing frame invites the reader to map Judas onto Ahithophel. Faint here because John does not narrate Judas's death, so the link rests on the larger Davidic matrix rather than this pericope's wording.
Low confidence