For thus says Yahweh, “You were sold for nothing; and you shall be redeemed without money.”
⛓ Read Isaiah 52 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.
Allusion3
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
'You were bought with a price' (v.20) evokes the redemption language of Isa 52:3 ('you were sold for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money'), reframing the believer as God's purchased possession who is no longer his own. Coherent with the surrounding new-exodus redemption motif; medium volume by theme.
Medium confidencePaul's redemption formula 'you were bought with a price' inverts Isa 52:3, 'you were sold for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money'—the prophetic image of God reclaiming his enslaved people. The buying/redeeming-from-bondage motif coheres exactly with Paul's exhortation to slaves and freedmen. Volume is conceptual; the distinctive redemption language makes it a plausible allusion at medium confidence.
Medium confidence'You were sold for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money' stands behind 'redeemed, not with silver or gold' (1:18)—redemption explicitly not monetary. Distinctive silver/gold-vs-true-redemption contrast.
Medium confidence