“Sing, barren, you who didn’t bear; break out into singing, and cry aloud, you who did not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife,” says Yahweh.
⛓ Read Isaiah 54 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.
V.27 quotes Isaiah 54:1 almost verbatim (LXX): 'Rejoice, you barren who don't bear... more are the children of the desolate than of her who has a husband.' Highest volume; the barren-now-fruitful Zion is mapped onto the free Jerusalem above and Sarah. Explicit 'it is written.'
High confidenceAllusion1
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
'Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed' inverts the Isaianic 'Sing, O barren one' — but more directly draws on the prophetic topos that in days of judgment childlessness becomes a mercy. Coherent with Luke's Jerusalem-doom oracle; the barren-woman language is availably scriptural.
Medium confidence