“Listen to me, you who follow after righteousness, you who seek Yahweh: look to the rock you were cut from, and to the hold of the pit you were dug from. Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who bore you; for when he was but one I called him, and I blessed him, and made him many.
⛓ Read Isaiah 51 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.
"God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones" plays on Isaiah 51:1-2, which calls Israel to "look to the rock from which you were hewn ... to Abraham your father," the rock-Abraham-descendants nexus John inverts. The shared Abraham-from-stone logic gives this real Volume; possible Hebrew wordplay (banim/abanim, children/stones) strengthens the link.
Medium confidence'God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones' plays on Isa 51:1-2: 'look to the rock from which you were hewn... look to Abraham your father.' The stone/rock-and-Abraham pairing is distinctive; God can hew new children from rock as he made many from one Abraham. Notable Volume on the rock-Abraham combination.
Medium confidenceEcho1
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
'On this rock I will build' may play on the 'rock from which you were hewn' (Abraham) imagery for the founding of the people of God on a chosen progenitor. Disputed; rock-foundation imagery is diffuse.
Low confidence