Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
⛓ Read Proverbs 16 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.
Allusion1
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
'Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall' underwrites the warning that a new convert, being puffed up, may 'fall into the same condemnation as the devil.' The pride-then-fall logic is the wisdom commonplace Paul deploys.
Medium confidenceEcho4
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
Diotrephes 'who loves to be first' and lords it over the assembly embodies the proud heart that wisdom warns precedes destruction. The portrait of self-exaltation refusing the brothers is drawn against the Proverbs critique of haughtiness.
Medium confidence'Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall' undergirds love that 'doesn't brag, is not proud' (ou physioutai). The wisdom condemnation of arrogance is the broad OT seedbed for Paul's anti-boasting predicates, a thematic rather than verbal echo.
Low confidencePeter's confident boast 'I will lay down my life for you,' answered by the prediction of a threefold denial, fits the wisdom pattern that pride precedes a fall. The connection is to a proverbial topos rather than a cited text. Faint and marked contested.
Low confidenceThe dispute about who is greatest and Jesus' reversal that the first must be last and servant of all coheres with wisdom warnings that pride goes before destruction and humility precedes honor. The link is thematic rather than verbal. It situates the teaching in the OT wisdom reversal of status.
Low confidence