Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked.
⛓ Read Deuteronomy 10 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.
Allusion3
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
2:29 'circumcision is that of the heart' directly echoes Moses' command 'circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn' — the foundational text spiritualizing circumcision (note the proximity to Deut 10:17's impartiality, used at 2:11).
High confidencePaul's relativizing of physical circumcision ('Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God') stands in the prophetic-Deuteronomic tradition that subordinates the bodily rite to the 'circumcision of the heart' and obedience (Deut 10:16). Coherence is high: Paul keeps the command-keeping while voiding the flesh-mark, exactly the Deuteronomic move. Volume is conceptual; the source is distinctive and available.
Medium confidenceCircumcise the foreskin of your heart and be no longer stiff-necked supplies the same heart-circumcision idiom; its recurrence alongside Deut 30:6 and Jer 4:4 confirms a stable tradition standing behind Paul's spiritualized circumcision.
Medium confidenceEcho4
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
"Circumcise the foreskin of your heart" supplies the Torah's own move from fleshly to inward circumcision, the trajectory Paul completes with "new creation" (v.15). Coherence is high and the motif recurs (Deut 30:6); offered as a corroborating echo of the heart-circumcision tradition.
Medium confidenceJesus' explanation that Moses permitted divorce 'because of the hardness of your hearts' draws on the Deuteronomic idiom of the uncircumcised/hardened heart of stubborn Israel.
Medium confidence'Circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn' is a further Deuteronomic source for the heart-circumcision motif Paul invokes against 'confidence in the flesh.' Recurrence across Deuteronomy and Jeremiah strengthens the whole cluster.
Medium confidence'Circumcise the foreskin of your heart' reinforces the inward-circumcision motif behind 'cleansing their hearts' (v.9). Faint, overlaps with Deut 30:6.
Low confidence