For the poor will never cease out of the land. Therefore I command you to surely open your hand to your brother, to your needy, and to your poor, in your land.
⛓ Read Deuteronomy 15 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.
Jesus' 'you always have the poor with you' directly invokes Deut 15:11, 'the poor will never cease out of the land,' the Torah charge that grounds open-handed giving. High Volume by near-quotation and clear Availability; the allusion turns the verse's perpetual-poverty clause to relativize almsgiving against the unrepeatable burial of Messiah.
High confidenceJesus' saying 'you always have the poor with you' reproduces Deuteronomy's declaration that 'the poor will never cease out of the land,' which grounds the command to open one's hand to the needy. The verbal volume is high and the coherence sharp: Jesus does not dismiss the poor but cites the very text that mandates perpetual generosity, contrasting that standing obligation with the unrepeatable moment of his own burial.
High confidence'you always have the poor with you' (v11) quotes the Deuteronomic axiom 'the poor will never cease out of the land'; Jesus invokes the law's own realism not to dismiss the poor but to mark the unrepeatable hour of his presence.
High confidenceEcho3
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
The command to give generously to the poor ('open wide your hand to your brother') is the Torah background for Jesus' presupposition that disciples 'do merciful deeds'; almsgiving is assumed righteousness, not optional.
Medium confidencePaul came 'to bring gifts for the needy to my nation' — almsgiving to the poor reflects the Torah's command to open the hand to the needy. Thematic, no verbal link.
Low confidenceThe disciples' guess that Judas should 'give something to the poor' reflects the Deuteronomic almsgiving duty toward the poor at the feast. The connection is to ordinary festal piety and only incidental to the narrative. Faint.
Low confidence