Sing, heavens; and be joyful, earth; and break out into singing, mountains: for Yahweh has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his afflicted.
⛓ Read Isaiah 49 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.
Allusion2
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
Isaiah declares that YHWH 'has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted,' coupling consolation with mercy toward the afflicted exactly as Paul's 'Father of mercies and God of all comfort who comforts us in all our affliction.' The mercy/comfort/affliction triad is distinctive of the Servant-era consolation oracles, satisfying volume and thematic coherence.
High confidencePaul's title for God, 'he who comforts the lowly/downcast,' closely renders Isaiah 49:13 ('the LORD has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted'), part of the Servant-Songs comfort tradition Paul mines throughout 2 Corinthians. The verbal link of God-comforting-the-afflicted is high in volume, and Isaiah's recurrence across the letter (and within this chapter) satisfies availability and recurrence. Coherence is strong: Paul casts his own affliction-and-comfort in Isaian terms.
High confidenceEcho2
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
'The Lord has comforted his people' continues the Isaianic consolation motif behind God's gift of eternal comfort; faint.
Low confidence'Sing, heavens; and be joyful, earth' — prophetic summons to the cosmos to rejoice at God's salvation; faint parallel to the heavenly rejoicing of 12:12.
Low confidence