“Keep far from a false charge, and don’t kill the innocent and righteous: for I will not justify the wicked.
⛓ Read Exodus 23 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.
God's self-description as one who 'justifies the ungodly' (4:5) deliberately inverts the legal maxim of Exodus 23:7 LXX, 'you shall not justify the ungodly' (ou dikaioseis ton asebe). Paul scandalously predicates of God the very act forbidden to human judges, signaling that justification is grace, not legal verdict on merit.
Medium confidenceEcho1
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
'Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent' coheres with Jesus' refusal to condemn and with exposing the accusers' bad faith. Contested because the verbal contact is thematic rather than lexical, but the coherence with the pericope's concern for unjust killing is strong.
Medium confidence