The spirit of man is Yahweh’s lamp, searching all his innermost parts.
⛓ Read Proverbs 20 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 spirit of the man which is in him' knows 'the things of a man' (v.11) draws on Proverbs 20:27, 'the spirit of man is the lamp of the LORD, searching all the inward parts.' The shared verb 'search' and the human spirit as inner knower make this a strong conceptual source for Paul's analogy between man's spirit and God's Spirit.
Medium confidence"The spirit of man is the lamp of the LORD, searching all the inward parts" supplies the inner-lamp imagery for "the lamp of the body is the eye." The wisdom equation of lamp and inner illumination grounds 11:34.
Medium confidenceEcho2
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
Proverbs' 'The spirit of man is the LORD's lamp, searching all his innermost parts' supplies a lamp-as-revelation image coherent with the saying that what is hidden must come to light (4:22). The lamp metaphor for disclosure of inner things gives thematic coherence, though Mark cites nothing and lamp imagery is widespread.
Low confidence'The spirit of man is the LORD's lamp, searching all his innermost parts' — inner illumination imagery related to the lamp of the body.
Low confidence