For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not.
Job 33:14, The Bible
For God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God.
Psalms 62:11, The Bible
I have been reading a lot about literary structures used in the Bible. One structure that recurs often is the chiasmus. In this blog post, we'll be analyzing the first chiasmus I discovered myself while studying the Bible.
What is a chiasmus?
But many that are first shall be last; and the last first.
Mark 10:31, The Bible
A chiasmus is an inversion of the relationship between the elements of phrases, or in simpler terms, inverted parallelism. Parallelism is the repetition of grammatical elements in writing and speaking. Examples of parallelism in grammar would be the following:
- no pain, no gain
- in for a penny, in for a pound
- where there is smoke, there is fire
- it takes one to know one
As you can see from the examples listed, each phrase has repeated grammatical elements, even though the content of the elements themselves are unique. Here the parallelism is obvious; the words that appear in the same position are paralleled:
- pain and gain
- penny and pound
- smoke and fire
- takes and knows
All other words are the same. A chiasmus flips this concept:
- Never let a fool kiss you or a kiss fool you. (Note fool/kiss and kiss/fool.)
- The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. (Note sabbath/man and man/sabbath.)
This is the basic idea of a chiasmus, the first becomes the last, and the last the first. Words are still paralleled, but there is an inversion.
Because of how the words are "crossed", the letter "X" is usually associated with the concept. (The prefix "chi-" in Greek represents "X".)
My analysis of Deuteronomy 18
Just as sentences can have parallelism and chiasmi, so can entire scriptures:
9 When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations.
10 There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch,
11 Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.
12 For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee.
13 Thou shalt be perfect with the LORD thy God.
14 For these nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto observers of times, and unto diviners: but as for thee, the LORD thy God hath not suffered thee so to do.
Deuteronomy 18:9-14, The Bible
In the scripture quoted above, God instructs his people to not commit abomination in the land he's about to give to them, or else he would drive them out like he did to the nations before them. It's not really what God says here I'm interested in, but how he says it. He used a chiastic structure, as we discussed in the previous section. How you ask? Let's break it down:
In summary, we can say that the passage is saying:
(A) - Don't do as other nations (v. 9)
(B) - What you should not do (v. 10-11)
(C) - I drove the nations out because of the abominations (v. 12)
(B') - What you should do (v. 13)
(A') - What other nations did (v. 14)
The structure can be summarized as A - B - C - B' - A'. The point of what God is trying to say, sort of like the climax in a movie, is at the center. A/A' and B/B' surround the point and support it.
Why does any of this matter?
- Form is important, even God uses it. Chiastic structures are used repeatedly in the Bible, and God uses it as a teaching tool for his people.
- God repeats himself a lot (mainly because man doesn't pay attention).
- Chiastic structures can be used to echo important ideas, and present the point of what you are saying very strongly in the center, like a bold large header on a document to the normal sized text of its body font.
- Chiastic structures are still used in art today, like movies, poetry and even music!
The bottom line
Learning literary structures would only help you to appreciate design and have a deeper understanding of the Bible. Equipping yourself with this knowledge can distinguish you from shallow readers.