If you do well, won’t it be lifted up? If you don’t do well, sin crouches at the door. Its desire is for you, but you are to rule over it.”
⛓ 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.
Echo4
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
'Sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.' The personification of sin as a lurking, desiring power that James develops in the conceive-and-bear imagery resonates with God's warning to Cain.
Medium confidenceTo Cain: sin 'is crouching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.' Paul's 'do not let sin reign (basileueto) in your mortal body' (6:12) personifies Sin as a power seeking to master a person who must instead exercise dominion over it. The shared image of Sin as an external would-be ruler the believer must refuse to obey is striking; many read 6:12 against this primal scene.
Medium confidenceSin 'lieth at the door' desiring to master Cain, while the called one must rule over it, parallels the one born of God who 'keeps himself' so the evil one cannot touch him. Both portray an external malevolent power kept at bay by the faithful. A faint backdrop to self-keeping against an encroaching evil.
Low confidenceSin 'crouching at the door' whose desire is for Cain, which he must master, prefigures Paul's sin 'dwelling in me' and warring to bring captivity (7:17, 7:23)—personified sin contending for mastery over the self.
Low confidence