“‘You shall not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind; but you shall fear your God. I am Yahweh.
⛓ Read Leviticus 19 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 shall not put a stumbling block before the blind" is the foundational Torah text for Paul's warning that liberty must not become "a stumbling block to the weak" (v.9). The stumbling-block image and the protection of the vulnerable are taken straight from the Holiness Code. High coherence; the weak stand in for the blind as those liable to be tripped.
High confidenceThe skandalon ('stumbling block') vocabulary draws on the Holiness Code prohibition against placing a stumbling block before the blind; Matthew moralizes the cultic-ethical image into causing 'these little ones' to fall.
Medium confidenceThe command not to 'put a stumbling block in his brother's way' (proskomma, 14:13) draws on the Holiness Code prohibition: 'You shall not put a stumbling block before the blind' (Leviticus 19:14 LXX, proskomma / skandalon). Paul transposes the literal physical stumbling-block into the moral injury of causing a fellow believer to fall.
Medium confidence