Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me.
⛓ Read Psalm 51 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.
'A pure heart' echoes David's penitential plea, 'Create in me a clean heart, O God.' The renewed, purified heart is the locus of the love that fulfills the law. Paul presupposes this OT theology of inward cleansing.
High confidenceCreate in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me supplies the language of renewal by the Spirit. The Davidic prayer joins cleansing and inward renewing precisely as Titus joins washing and renewing of the Holy Spirit.
Medium confidenceEcho2
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
'Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me' joins the create-and-renew language behind 'renewed in the spirit of your mind... created in righteousness.' Volume is moderate; the penitential renewal motif coheres with the put-off/put-on transformation.
Medium confidenceThe plea for a 'clean heart' and right spirit parallels Paul's claim to serve God with a pure conscience; the conscience motif develops the OT clean-heart ideal. Faint, marked contested.
Low confidence