“See now that I myself am he. There is no god with me. I kill and I make alive. I wound and I heal. There is no one who can deliver out of my hand.
⛓ Read Deuteronomy 32 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.
'There is one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy' echoes the Song of Moses, 'I kill and I make alive… there is none who can deliver out of my hand' — the sole divine prerogative over life and death.
High confidence'I kill and I make alive... there is no god with me.' God's exclusive prerogative over life and death undergirds 'God, who gives life to all things' and the doxology's stress that he 'alone has immortality.' Supports both the life-giver and sole-sovereign motifs of vv.13-16.
Medium confidence'God, who gives life to the dead' (4:17) also resonates with Deuteronomy 32:39, 'I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal,' a foundational text for God's sole power over death and life. Reinforces the same divine attribute Paul predicates.
Medium confidenceEcho5
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
'I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal, and there is none that can deliver out of my hand' is the Song of Moses' claim of exclusive power over death and rescue, underwriting Paul's confidence in God's deliverance against self-reliance. The kill/make-alive + deliver vocabulary aligns closely. Reasonable volume.
Medium confidence'There is no one who can deliver out of my hand' (the same idiom) with 'I kill and I make alive' stands behind Jesus giving eternal life and holding the sheep inviolably. Reinforces the divine-hand security motif alongside Isaiah.
Medium confidence'I kill and I make alive' is the foundational divine self-claim that only God gives and takes life; Jesus' 'I am the resurrection and the life' assumes this prerogative in the first person. The 'I am' form coheres with the Johannine egō eimi sayings rooted in Deuteronomy/Isaiah self-declarations. Moderate volume.
Medium confidence'There is no god beside me' / unmatched divine power may color 'Are we stronger than he?' (v.22). Faint, but consistent with Paul's sustained use of the Song of Moses in this section.
Low confidence'There is no god besides me... I kill and I make alive' underlies the totalizing pairing 'neither death, nor life' (v.38) as the extremes wholly within God's sovereign love.
Low confidence◇ Figural1
A typological pattern re-read in a later text — no verbal quotation, high figural coherence.
'As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life' draws on the Song of Moses' exclusive divine self-claim, 'I kill and I make alive,' which makes giving life and putting to death God's sole prerogative. Volume: strong conceptual identity (raising the dead / making alive). Coherence: very high — this is the theological warrant for the equal-with-God claim, transferring the uniquely divine life-giving power to the Son. Recurrence: the make-alive formula recurs (1 Sam 2:6; cf. v.21,24-29 below).
High confidence