Behold, you have made my days hand breadths. My lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely every man stands as a breath.” Selah. “Surely every man walks like a shadow. Surely they busy themselves in vain. He heaps up, and doesn’t know who shall gather.
⛓ Read Psalm 39 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.
'Man is a mere breath… a man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather' stands behind 'you are a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes,' the breath-brevity figure applied to acquisitive boasting.
High confidenceEcho1
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
Paul's 'those who buy as though they did not possess' and the fleeting 'form of this world' closely match Ps 39:6: 'man goes about as a shadow; he heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather it.' The shared image of buying/possessing as vain because life and world are transient is distinctive. Coherence with Paul's 'as though not' is strong; medium.
Medium confidence