Then the lame man will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will sing; for waters will break out in the wilderness, and streams in the desert.
⛓ Read Isaiah 35 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.
Quotation1
A formal citation — high verbal volume, often introduced by a saying-formula.
'Then shall the lame man leap as a hart' directly underlies 'the lame walk'; Isaiah 35 is the controlling subtext for Jesus' reply, signaling that the eschatological restoration has arrived.
High confidenceAllusion3
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
The healed man 'walking, leaping' (vv. 8-9) enacts Isaiah's eschatological promise 'then shall the lame man leap as a hart'; the verbal pairing of lameness and leaping is the signature image, and Luke uses the same scene to frame the apostolic age as the dawning restoration of Israel.
High confidenceThe man 'a cripple from his mother's womb, who never had walked' is healed and 'leaped up and walked' (vv8-10). Isaiah's eschatological promise, 'then shall the lame man leap (halletai) as a hart,' supplies the rare verb and the lame-restored motif. Volume high (distinctive 'leap' for a healed lame man); Thematic Coherence strong (the dawning age of restoration enacted among the nations); Recurrence good (Isa 35 is a programmatic restoration text echoed across Luke-Acts).
High confidence'The tongue of the mute shall sing for joy.' The mute man speaking when the demon is cast out completes the Isaiah 35 cluster (blind see in 9:30, mute speak here), presenting Jesus' miracles as the bundled signs of Isaiah's restoration.
High confidenceEcho1
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
"Then shall the lame man leap like a deer" anchors the healing of the paralytic in Isaiah's eschatological restoration, where bodily wholeness signals the inbreaking reign of God. Thematic coherence with Mark's miracle is high; the crowd's astonishment ("We never saw anything like this!", v.12) fits the new-thing motif of Isaiah 35 and 43. Verbal repetition is limited, so this is an echo rather than allusion.
Medium confidence