“To the children of Levi, behold, I have given all the tithe in Israel for an inheritance, in return for their service which they serve, even the service of the Tent of Meeting.
⛓ Read Numbers 18 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 sons of Levi… have a commandment to take tithes of the people according to the law’ (v. 5) alludes directly to the Levitical tithe-statute. Strong thematic coherence: the whole pericope contrasts the Levites who receive tithes by legal mandate with Melchizedek, who received them from Abraham himself, the Levites' ancestor. Verbal overlap on ‘tithe’ and ‘the children of Levi.’
High confidenceThe ‘Levitical priesthood… under which the people received the law’ (v. 11) and the contrast with a priest from a tribe that never ‘officiated at the altar’ (v. 13) presuppose the Levi-only priestly charter of Numbers 18. Recurrence within the chapter (the same statute underlies 7:5) raises confidence on an otherwise conceptual allusion.
Medium confidenceEcho1
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
The principle that the Levite is given the tithe 'in return for the service that they do' anticipates Paul's argument that the apostolic soldier/vinedresser/shepherd is entitled to support for his labor (vv.4-7). Faint at this point and developed more fully at vv.13-14; cited here for the laborer-deserves-his-keep coherence.
Low confidence