If Cain will be avenged seven times, truly Lamech seventy-seven times.”
⛓ Read Genesis 4 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.
'Until seventy times seven' (or 'seventy-seven') deliberately reverses Lamech's boast 'If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold': the same numbers that measured escalating vengeance now measure limitless forgiveness. The LXX of Gen 4:24 reads hebdomekontakis hepta, matching Jesus' phrasing.
High confidenceEcho1
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
Lamech's boast that he is avenged 'seventy-sevenfold' is the numerical foil that Jesus' sevenfold-forgiveness saying (and Matthew's seventy-seven) inverts: unlimited vengeance becomes unlimited pardon. The shared and distinctive sevenfold idiom gives moderate Volume; the figural reversal supplies Coherence.
Medium confidence