My son, sow not upon the furrows of unrighteousness, And you shall not reap them sevenfold.
⛓ Read Sirach 7 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.
"Do not sow in the furrows of injustice, lest you reap them sevenfold" is the Second-Temple form of the maxim, demonstrating its currency in Paul's milieu (availability). Volume is moderate; it strengthens the case that v.7 cites a proverbial commonplace rather than one prophet.
Medium confidenceEcho1
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
Ben Sira's 'do not sow in the furrows of injustice, lest you reap them sevenfold' offers a Second-Temple instance of the sowing-reaping recompense Paul assumes. Availability is good but the volume is faint and the link conceptual, since Sirach frames the negative (injustice) while Paul frames generosity positively. Marked contested as background topos rather than source.
Low confidence