For the customs of the peoples are vanity; for one cuts a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman with the ax.
⛓ Read Jeremiah 10 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.
The customs of the peoples are vain/futile in Jeremiah 10 supplies the language of 'vain deceit' rooted in worthless human practice and false worship of created things, coherent with 'elements of the world' as enslaving cosmic powers. Volume is moderate via the LXX 'vain' vocabulary.
Medium confidenceThe Gentiles' 'futility of mind' echoes Jeremiah's polemic that 'the customs of the peoples are vanity/futile' (cf. 2:5, going after worthlessness and becoming worthless). Volume is moderate; the 'futility/vanity of the nations' idiom is a fixed anti-idolatry trope Paul redeploys. Coherence with the idolatry frame is strong.
Medium confidence