Who are you, great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you are a plain; and he will bring out the capstone with shouts of ‘Grace, grace, to it!’”
⛓ Read Zechariah 4 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.
'So as to remove mountains' echoes the oracle to Zerubbabel, 'Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain,' where the mountain of obstacle is leveled not by might but by God's Spirit. The mountain-as-impediment removed by divine power coheres with Paul's faith that 'removes mountains.' Volume is moderate; the saying also circulated in dominical tradition.
Medium confidenceZechariah's word that the great 'mountain' shall become a plain before Zerubbabel by the Spirit, not by might, is the canonical pairing of faith with the moving/leveling of an immovable obstacle. The mountain-removed-by-faith logic gives Coherence with 'faith like a mustard seed,' though Luke uses a sycamore-into-sea rather than a mountain, lowering Volume.
Medium confidenceEcho2
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
'Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain.' The proverb of removing a mountain by God's power/Spirit may stand behind 'you will tell this mountain, Move from here.' Thematic.
Medium confidence'Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain': prophetic precedent for the leveling of a mountain by faith/divine word, paralleling 'tell this mountain, Be taken up and cast into the sea' (21:21).
Low confidence