Where could I get meat to give to all this people? For they weep to me, saying, ‘Give us meat, that we may eat.’ I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me. If you treat me this way, please kill me right now, if I have found favor in your sight; and don’t let me see my wretchedness.” Yahweh said to Moses, “Gather to me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people, and officers over […]
⛓ Read Numbers 11 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.
Philip's 'Where are we to buy bread... not sufficient' (v.7) closely mirrors Moses' despairing 'Where am I to get meat... shall flocks and herds be slaughtered to suffice them?' Strong structural and verbal Coherence: a leader confronted with an impossible crowd, mountain setting, and divine provision overriding human arithmetic.
High confidenceMoses' despairing 'Where am I to get meat for all this people?' and God's provision in the wilderness underlie the disciples' 'send the multitude away... we are in a deserted place.' The seating in companies recalls Israel's ordered camp; volume and coherence both strong.
High confidenceMoses' despairing question, 'Where am I to get meat to give all this people?... Shall flocks and herds be slaughtered for them?' mirrors the disciples' helplessness before the hungry crowd. The motif of an overwhelmed leader confronting an impossible feeding in the wilderness is shared.
Medium confidenceEcho1
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
Moses' protest 'Where am I to get meat to give to all this people?' (Num 11:13) and the doubt that flesh could be found in the wilderness underlies the disciples' helpless question in v.4. Coherence with the wilderness-provision frame is high; this is a recurrent grumbling-and-provision pattern Mark draws upon.
Medium confidence