But I said, “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely the justice due to me is with Yahweh, and my reward with my God.”
⛓ 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.
Echo3
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
Paul's fear that "our labor would have been in vain" reaches for the Septuagintal idiom of laboring fruitlessly (eis kenon), prominent in the Servant's lament "I have labored in vain." Isaiah's promise that such labor is finally not wasted is the same hope Paul expresses for his missionary toil.
Medium confidencePaul's fear that he 'might be running, or had run, in vain' (v.2) echoes the Servant's lament, 'I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing.' Coherence with Paul's self-understanding as a Servant-shaped apostle to the nations (Isaiah 49:6) raises this above a stock idiom.
Medium confidence'That I didn't run in vain nor labor in vain' resonates with the Servant's lament 'I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing,' the worry of fruitless toil later vindicated by God. The 'in vain' (eis kenon / kenos) labor motif and the Servant context (already active in the hymn) give a faint coherent echo, kept low for thin verbal overlap.
Low confidence