2 Corinthians 2:14-16 → Leviticus 1:9

The evidence here is real but weaker than the aroma pairs around it, and the Reference Type is set to Echo to say so. Paul does use both lexemes: ὀσμή (G3744) at verses 14 and 16, and εὐωδία (G2175) at verse 15 — "we are to God the sweet aroma of Christ." But verified at the NT Reference shelf, he never joins them into the fixed collocation ὀσμὴ εὐωδίας that renders rêaḥ nîḥôaḥ in the Greek Pentateuch and that he does use at Ephesians 5:2 and Philippians 4:18. The two words come apart and do separate work. Nor is the governing image sacrificial: verse 14's controlling verb is θριαμβεύω (G2358), the Roman triumphal procession, in which a victorious general parades his captives through streets thick with burning incense. Leviticus 1:9 is therefore not a text Paul is alluding to; it is one strand of an idiom he is fusing with another. That said, the Levitical strand is genuinely there and does genuine work — "we are to God (τῷ θεῷ) the sweet aroma of Christ" is altar language, not parade language, and it is the phrase that makes verse 16 intelligible. Because the two images are laid over each other, the same smoke means opposite things depending on where you are standing. In a triumph, the incense along the route smells like victory to the soldiers marching and like execution to the prisoners walking to their deaths; at an altar, the smoke is acceptance to the worshipper and the end of the animal. Paul says the gospel is like that: "To the one, we are an odor of death and demise; to the other, a fragrance that brings life." Nothing about the aroma changes. The preacher does not adjust it, cannot soften it, and is not permitted to. Hence the question that closes the paragraph — "and who is qualified for such a task?" — which Paul answers three sentences later: "not that we are competent in ourselves... our competence comes from God" (3:5). The pastoral weight is exactly there. A ministry whose results are not in its own hands is a ministry that can stop performing; and a Christ whose fragrance carries life to everyone being saved is one whose smell you want on you, at whatever cost to your reputation among those who are perishing.