Yahweh passed by before him, and proclaimed, “Yahweh! Yahweh, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth, keeping loving kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and disobedience and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the children’s children, on the third and on the fourth generation.”
⛓ Read Exodus 34 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.
Allusion4
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
The LORD 'merciful and gracious... forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin' supplies the character ground for God being faithful and just to forgive. The covenant name-formula underwrites divine reliability in pardon.
Medium confidence'Be kind... tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God also in Christ forgave you' grounds the imitation of God in the merciful self-revelation 'merciful and gracious... forgiving iniquity.' Volume is moderate and coherence high: divine forgiving compassion is the model for human forgiveness (imitatio Dei). Availability is a cornerstone OT text.
Medium confidenceThe covenantal self-revelation of the LORD as the one 'forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin' is the foundational scriptural warrant for God's sole authority to pardon. The scribes' objection ('who can forgive sins but God alone?') rests on this confession. Medium volume; thematic rather than verbal.
Medium confidenceGod's 'forbearance' and 'passing over of former sins' (3:25-26) draws on the covenant formula of the LORD slow to anger, forgiving iniquity yet not clearing the guilty; Paul shows how God can pass over sins and still be just.
Medium confidenceEcho2
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
The covenant self-revelation of YHWH as the God "forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin" is the foundational text behind the scribes' assumption that forgiveness belongs to God alone. Thematic coherence is high: Jesus' pronouncement of forgiveness enacts a divine attribute scripturally reserved to the LORD. The verbal contact is via the shared lexeme of forgiving sin rather than direct quotation.
High confidenceThe LORD 'forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin' is the foundational self-revelation of divine pardon; the paralytic's forgiveness re-presents this divine attribute in Jesus' speech.
Medium confidence