How to Study the Bible III - Chiasms
Vern Peterman · May 22, 2016
How to Study Bible (2016), No. 20
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926533177735

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

So here we have chiasms. And I have this picture that I'll typically put up there, something like that. And you've probably seen a number of these kind of scenes, late reflection kind of pictures. And this one's in Yosemite. But the idea is that you get a mirror image. And that gives us an illustration. A chiasm is a mirror image in writing. In Psalms there are some other variations besides direct reflections and we'll talk about that in a minute. One of the things, it gets called chiasm or chiasmus. I prefer to just keep it simple as chiasm.

We had some lessons that Craig did on sentence diagramming. That was kind of a Civil War era technology. It started in English and then got carried over into other languages. Outlining is also a fairly recent thing. The Bible authors did not, from anything we can tell, did not use outlines to start writing their books. But one of the things that it appears that they did was use chiasm quite a bit. We have this picture here where it's a mirror image in a lake. Their mental framework was often an arched doorway.

You have like a keystone at the top of the doorway when they make them out of stones. a keystone at the top of the doorway and so you'd have, here's this doorway and it's got a stone here at the edge of the door and another stone, another stone, another stone, and then you go up through the doorway and the keystone's at the top, right? And then down along the side and you can max the stones across.

That is kind of a mental picture that writers and speakers would use when they had chiasm. They would go through and make their statements and picture in their mind, here's this point, and that point, and that point, and now here's the pivot point, the keystone, and now I'm going to go and cover the same topics. Here's one of the things that that does. If you ever hear a speech class, they would say, tell them what you're going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them. So you may have heard that.

And that's what a chiasm does. And so someone is speaking or writing in ancient times, And this was not done, by the way, just with the Hebrews. It was done by other people, but we find from the Old Testament into the New Testament chiasms, and one of the points we make with the bullets here is sometimes it's just a verse or two, sometimes it's a whole passage or even several chapters, and sometimes it's the whole book is one big chiasm.

And so it's helpful because you know that's where they're going with it, right? And so this is their intended message and it helps you understand better, oh, that's what he's writing about. And that's why he, you know, why is he repeating himself? Because that's why. That's why. And also, and we'll see this as well, that sometimes there's a change of emphasis as it goes through this chiasm.

Let's take an example of the first one. Here's a small-scale chiasm, 2 Corinthians 3, 17 and 18. And by the way, we have chapter and verse numbers, right? Did the Bible authors have chapter and verse numbers? No. Chapters around the year 1200, verses about the middle 1500s. Really? How long? verses in the middle 15 and it started off in the Greek text and then they ended up expanding it to other things.

So here we have 2 Corinthians 3.17-18 Now the Lord is the spirit and where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. And then he goes to but we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror that's a process right the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, a process, and then just as from the Lord the Spirit. So he starts off with the Lord who is the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, right? And he ends with the Lord who is the Holy Spirit. And in the middle, what's the middle of the chiasm? The keystone, if you will. The glory of the Lord is the middle point.

We've talked about this before. How do we emphasize things when we write? Bold, italics, and underline. We use bold, italics, and underline. That's our standard. Did they have that? They didn't use that. They used things like this. And so you emphasize by repetition in the chiasm. And then you emphasize by the middle, the turning point in the chiasm. The keystone. And that's the keystone.

And so you'd have that chiasm pattern, and whether they're writing in a small scale like this, or a whole book, they would have that pattern in mind as they go through and do their writing. What whole book is your chiasm? Oh, we're going to get to that. But the whole book, Book of Ruth, is a very good chiasm. Esther is also a chiasm, but we won't get to that one.

So, do you have to understand the Greek to be able to pick these things out, or are the translations good enough that you can pick it out? Often the English is all it takes. Occasionally the Greek will help assure that it's the right thing, but often times with the translation, You're good enough to work with the translation. So is there a book out that talks about chiasms like there is about metaphors? Yes, and at the end I'll give you a thing that you can just click on a link and get it downloaded for free. Okay, so here is 2 Corinthians 3, 17 and 18 and let's talk about this.

So we start with the Lord as the Spirit. and we end with the Lord as the Spirit, the next thing in is a process that we do in the first part, and then the second one is a process that the Lord carries out, being transformed. So those are both processes, and the glory of the Lord is in the middle of the chiasm. Make sure you have a handout. So the glory of the Lord is in the middle of this. We have a process in each case. The first process is our part, and the second process is the Lord's part. And something else that comes out of this, and we'll be getting more into cultural patterns, Because its language, history, and culture are the elements that we use.

It so happens that Corinth was famous for its mirrors. And so mirrors were brought up by the Apostle Paul only twice. 1 Corinthians 13 and 2 Corinthians 3. He brings up mirrors. And beholding as in a mirror is one word in Greek. word. But he brings it up. He brings it up. Why? Because that fits the cultural background and why he would bring it up with them and only them as he writes all his letters. So you have that.

Now let's look at another thing that's a figure of speech. From glory to glory was one of Paul's figures of speech that means increasing. Life to life, death to death, faith to faith. It means increasing. That's his figure of speech pattern that he uses a number of times. And by the way, he uses it especially with the Corinthians. Possibly because of the mirror thing, but he uses it especially with the Corinthians. So anyway, here's an example of a chiasm.

It starts off and ends with a similar pattern. The turning point is the glory of the Lord, and sandwiched in between in each case is a process. The first part is our part in the process, the second part is the Lord's part, what He does. So then here we have a brief one, 1 Corinthians 119. And by the way, there's a whole bunch of other small chiasms that Paul used. And sometimes he'd do a poetic pattern and then switch to a chiasm.

So here's Isaiah 29.14, which Paul quoted in 1 Corinthians 119. So it shows both the Old and New Testaments, Isaiah and 1 Corinthians.

I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside. See that? I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside. So, small chiasm. Let's take a look at page 2. Here's one in 1 Corinthians 12, 13.

For by one spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, and whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one spirit." See that? And in this case, the dividing point there is whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and also there's a poetic pattern there. on top of the kayak. You've got one spirit, one spirit, and then we, and we, and then weather, and weather. Well we were all, we were all. Yep, we were all.

So there you have an example of a small kayak. And by the way, I use this indentation method of showing a chiasm. Some people use other methods. And you might run across that. That's fine. Whatever someone wants to do. It just makes it easier to see, here's what the pattern is. And we'll see a little bit more of that as we get farther along. Next one is the chiasm in 2 Corinthians 6, 11-13.

Our mouth has spoken freely to you, O Corinthians. Our heart is open wide to you. You are not restrained by us, but you are restrained in your own affections. Now, in a like exchange, I speak as to children. Open wide your heart. I put your heart in brackets to us also."

The first half is about Paul's expression and openness of heart to the believers of Corinth. The second half is about the believers' response to Paul and his companions. So this is where you'll have, instead of an exact duplication of the first part, you'll have, you know, this part addresses that, you know, the us, and then the second part addresses you. So that's a variation that he made in this chiasm. Our mouth has spoken freely to you. Our heart is open wide. You're not restrained by us. And then he switches in the second half to talk about them.

Here is a chiasm in 1 John 3.9. Again, it's just one verse.

Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for his seed remains in him, and he cannot sin because he has been born of God. Does that make sense? In this case, on a small scale, it can be fairly easy to see. You look at whoever has been born of God, because he's been born of God, and then does not sin, cannot sin, and in the middle for a seed remains in him.

So you've got, here's his chiasm, and he basically repeats things pretty directly. Now, we're stepping into the next one, chiasms within a passage, even up to several chapters. So this is not a tiny one. This is not a whole book. This is in between. Sometimes a part of a chapter, sometimes up to several chapters. So here's an example.

We have chiasm in Genesis 3, 9 through 22. And what's the passage here? This is the fall, right? This is Adam and Eve have sinned. And so what you see in the Lord's interaction with them is a chiasm. And there's a slight difference from the first half to the last half. So let's talk about that. So the Lord God said in interactions is in chapter 3, 9-11.

One of the characteristics of the interactions is God asks Adam questions. Where are you? Does God know where Adam is? Why is he asking the question if he knows where Adam is? God is asking a rhetorical question. It's not that he doesn't know the answer to it. He's asking it so that Adam will go, oh, God never had to ask before. Where are you? Right? Never happened. What's going on?

Yes, it's to cause Adam to think and to recognize not because God is ignorant of the answer. So it's entirely rhetorical. That's correct. So then he talks to Adam, talks to God about Eve, 3.12. One verse. Adam talks to God about Eve. What did he say? That woman that you gave me, blame, blame, blame, blame, blame. That woman that you gave me, it's her fault, it's your fault. I bear no responsibility here. Then the next part, Eve to God about the serpent. So Eve, serpent, you know, it did this thing.

Now, he starts it off however with a question. He questions the woman. Now, in the middle of the chiasm, God judges the serpent and promises the Savior. Does He ask Satan any questions? Why? Why not? Satan already knows. That's part one. Part two, what is Satan's other name? a liar and a deceiver.

You're not going to get a straight answer out of this guy anyway. So don't bother asking him any questions. He's not going to come to any realizations. He's already spiritually insane. There's no sense talking to him, other than to say, here's your curse. So then the next one, God turns around and judges Eve. The next one, God judges Adam. and then the Lord God said in the interactions. Now I've done two things to show in these last couple of examples, two things to show the parts of the chiasm. One is I've indented, and then I've also, I've had A and A prime is what that little apostrophe is indicating. A and A prime, B and B prime, C and C prime, and then D is the pivot point.

So it's got two methods of showing the chiasm. And both are fine. Whatever helps you to see it. The other thing I've done, and why this is printed out in color, is I've also color-coded it. So you can see the steps and distinctions and what corresponds. So I've actually done three things with this, not just two.

OK. So then, finally, the Lord God said in interactions is the last part of it, in 3.20-22. So you have this chiasm pattern. So far as I can tell, the first one to show up in the Bible is that one in Genesis 3. Alright, let's take a look at the top of page 3. So here's a chiasm in Isaiah 1 through 20, excuse me, 16, 1 through 22. It is the whole chapter. The whole chapter is a chiasm. Whereas previously I said, okay, here's a portion of the chapter. Now the whole chapter is a chiasm. So here we have in Isaiah 61 through 22, the Lord, the light of Zion.

And guess how it ends? The Lord, the light of Zion. And then the next one, the nation's accepted by the Lord. And then corresponding to that, Zion is transformed by the Lord. C is the world expectations met by the Lord, Zion's needs met by the Lord. So the first part is about the nations and the world. The second part is about Zion. So have the nations serve Zion, and the other word for nations is what? Gentiles, right? So the nation served Zion, the Gentiles served Zion, and then Zion the key to world destiny, and then the nations then again recognized Zion.

So here's the chiasm in this, and this is a millennial kingdom. The whole chapter is all about the Millennial Kingdom. And why are the Gentiles included in this Millennial Kingdom? Because there will be Gentiles over the whole earth, and what will be the focal point of those Gentiles? What will they be focused on? They'll be focused on Jerusalem, they'll be focused on the Messiah being there. In the Old Testament it says that a number of Gentiles will grab a hold of one Jew and say, take me to your Messiah, right? And so this is a description of that millennial kingdom, and focus upon Zion. Alright, is that clear? That seemed pretty evident. Alright.

Here we have a literary chiasm in Genesis that covers chapter 6, chapter 7, chapter 8, and chapter 9. Four chapters that get pulled into this chiasm. It is the flood story, the flood account, starting in chapter 6 and continuing on into chapter 9. of Genesis. And notice how does it start, and it's fairly complex. It starts with Noah and it ends with Noah. Second item, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Second to last item, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The ark's to be built, talking about the ark. As you go through this thing, it goes all the way into the center. God remembers Noah, and everything matches.

One more thing, and this is really cool, The literary chiasm contains a number chiasm as well, and I marked those out in blue, and it's 7 7 40 1 50, and then 1 50 40 7 7. So it's got a literary chiasm, it's got a number chiasm, and it's very clear. So you can imagine somebody, here is somebody who is telling the flood account, okay? And so they've got this thing all pictured in their minds, okay? They go in from one picture and they're rolling up, you know, one side of the doorway. They get to the keystone. God remembers Noah.

And then they roll down the other side and the numbers are, it's like a palindrome, except not in a, you know, small scale, but a huge scale, right? What's a palindrome? Palindrome is something that is said the same forwards and backwards. A palindrome word would be like radar. A palindrome word would be like radar. You actually have sentences that people put together that are palindrome. These are subject palindromes. that can be anywhere from, that's what a chiasm is, it's a subject palindrome that can be on different scales.

Everything from a verse or two to a whole book. Yes? Now, the book of Genesis was given to Moses on the mountain, right? So this chiasm then comes directly from the Lord. Yeah, if you look at it, this is several chapters. It's the flood account. He probably got it initially on, this is a stone tablet, clay tablet, right? And let's say this is the account of da, da, da, da, right? And so he got that. Whether he got this chiasm off of that tablet or whether he structured it that way, because essentially Genesis is a Moses edited document taken from probably clay tablets.

You'll see this is the generations of, this is the account of, and that's a Toledot tag. So you have here, it's very clear and very patterned. So here's the account. It's just rather astounding. And you can see, here's where he's going with it and here's how it ends up getting resolved and all those subjects get covered. It goes out in sequence and it goes back in sequence.

Yes, and so our method of pinning to do things with literature is with looking at things and wanting to outline it or something, right? Whereas as their intentional structure at various scales, was to create this chiasm. And so it's important for us to recognize that. An outline might be helpful for us, and a lot of commentaries, that's what they'll start with, or Bible handbooks, here's the outline. But the reality is that the chiasms are a far more prominent structure that's found throughout the Bible.

I mean, is it more of a Jewish way of pulling things out, like since Paul was a Jew? It was one of the ways that the Jews used. We don't have evidence that it was exclusively Jewish. Okay, thank you. So that's why it didn't include it in Hebrew poetry patterns or something like that. It was something that the Hebrews definitely used, but was also used by others of that time and that general area.

Alright, so let's take a look at the top of page 4. Here's a chiasm in Isaiah 38 and 39. Isaiah, by the way, is one of those books that has just gobs of chiasms, lots of chiasms. Here's two chapters long. So Hezekiah contemplates his death, and then the next topic is Isaiah and the word of the Lord, and it comes across as thus says the Lord in chapter 38, and then hear the word of the Lord in chapter 39, and then Hezekiah's dedication, Hezekiah's defection, Isaiah and the word of the Lord, and then Hezekiah contemplates life after contemplating death. So what you see is a reflective pattern, but also a contrast between the first half and the second half. Here is another small chiasm in Hebrews 10, 38, and 39.

But my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul. So one of the things you see there is the second part that I have in blue coloring. If he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. And of those who shrink back, the instructions of the shrink back word is the same. And by the way, you asked Stan about does it help to know the original language. The English and the original language are the same. Shrink back.

So, there is a small chiasm there. There are other chiasms. Here's another one, Hebrews 12, 1 and 2. Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus. Okay, so the first half there is what we're called to be doing. See that?

Now the pivot point is fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, what he did and is doing, is the rest of it. And so the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him, and there is set before which is the same, and endured and endurance, which is the same in the next section out, despising the shame. In other words, what do we do? We lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us.

But he despises the shame and then finally finishes off as sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. And by the way, the cloud of witnesses, are they in heaven or on earth? They're in heaven. And where did he sit? Sit down at the right hand of God in heaven.

So what you have here, the pattern is it starts off in heaven, it ends in heaven, and then the middle of the chiasm is here, right? And then it turns around and ends in heaven. The first half is about us, the second half is about Christ. See the patterns there? So we've got a clear chiasm, it's got a clear direction and pattern. Starts in heaven, it ends in heaven, what happens in between is here. See that?

It would almost be better to outline the chiasm than it would to outline it. That's right. In other words, if I recognize the chiasm, which is the intentional outline, it's better than my outlining it in our typical pattern, because we think our thoughts after the author. I outlined the whole New Testament, and I had a very difficult time doing it. Understanding what was said, and then putting a title on each subsection of each chapter. Understanding what the original authors, how they thought, what they wrote. Otherwise, you have a puzzling thing. Why is he going there? Why is he repeating himself? Why is he going backwards after going forwards? And so yet, you can really struggle trying to fit it into our modern concept of an outline. The reality is they thought about things in these poetic patterns and in these chiasms, and that's the way they thought about it.

We're going to talk about that in a bit. It's also the way they would memorize things. We, in our culture, have developed a pattern. It used to be that people said, well, I can look it up in a book. Today, you'd look it up on your tablet or your computer or your phone, right? And so we don't memorize something that we can look up one way or another. That's just kind of the mindset we have.

If you go into other oral cultures, and in spite of having a high degree of literacy, the Jews had an oral culture. All the rabbis taught their disciples, and it was not the custom of the disciples to write everything down that the rabbis said. The culture was to memorize everything the rabbi said. It was only later that the gospel authors and the authors of the New Testament started writing some things down, because they were of such an oral culture where they would memorize, and they would actually even drill one another.

He hears these disciples and they're sitting there, and just like something that we would recite and everybody would know, everybody among the disciples would know it and if somebody oopsed, they'd say, wait a minute, that's not right, right? A lot of us grew up with, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the country to which it belongs. If I start going off, Nancy is correcting me here. If I start going off, you say, wait a minute, that's not right. And that's what they would do. They would sit there and memorize things. And so memorizing whole sections of things would be exactly how they would do things. And it was only later that, oh, we better write this down, because I can't just always count on being around to spit it out for memory. Yes?

I'm really thankful for your teaching last week about the poetry part. It's beginning to really make sense to me, because the hardest passage I have ever memorized in the Bible is Romans 5, 15 through 19. Now that I understand it's poetry, and he's restating the same concepts in a different way, I can understand. I've got it memorized by rote, but you really have to study what he's saying, and it's really difficult to stay memorized. By the way, in Romans 5, the literary divide is between verses 11 and 12.

We'll talk about that maybe later. This next one is an example I referenced of the whole book. We're starting into that section and it's Ruth. So it's a whole page showing the book of Ruth as a chiasm. And I've done it in three ways. One is by indentation each time and then coming back. The next is having A and A prime. And then the third way is also every other one is color coded in blue. So we get multiple things underscoring the chiasm. So for example, the introduction is 10 years in Moab with death.

Who died in the Book of Ruth? Ruth's husband and sons. Right. So it's Ruth's husbands and it's Naomi's sons, right? So they're dying. So that's the beginning. At the end, epilogue, 10 generations of births. So you have a return of the 10 figure and then here's death and now here's births. And then in the next one, Naomi is too old to conceive. A son is born to Naomi in 417.

So let's think of this. How many late in life births can you think of from the Bible? Here's one of them right here. Can you think of another? Sarah and Abraham? Elizabeth and John the Baptist is one later in life. Have we got them all? Yes, that's it. So you've got late in life births as a kind of a pattern from the Old Testament on into the New. And what this one is interesting is Naomi is too old to conceive and then she has a baby, right? And then the next one is the possible Redeemer is introduced and the Redeemer is not denied, is the next one in the chapter four. So the whole thing follows a great pattern. Here's Naomi blesses Boaz, Boaz blesses Ruth in there.

What's the center of this? What's the center of the chiasm? So there's a plan laid by Naomi and Ruth and the rest of the book is the unwinding of that plan. So what you have is, now I've got a problem and I've got the setup here but I don't have a plan in place. Naomi and Ruth have this plan in place, that's the pivotal point and the rest of it is all the working out of the plans. So here's the whole book, it's very systematically laid out. The connections by chiasm are very good. In other words, it's not some, well I guess that sort of fits. It fits very well in the chiasm.

And then plus you see it starts off with this is a problem and it's getting worse. And then you see the plan laid out and all of a sudden Naomi conceives and it gets better and better. But it gets bad first. And so you see this thing sinking and then having the turning point and then great things happening from it. And it ends up that this gives an account of who was descended from Ruth. Jesus. First is King David and then on down to the line is Jesus.

This is so contrary to The way we write now, we bring everything all up, you know, and work out on the problems and really develop the problem. Yeah. And at the very end, we solve the problem. This solves the problem right in the middle and develops the story in a very creative way. Yeah, it is a touching story. It's a story that you look at at first, oh, this is how sad, you know, and then it ends up glorious.

But it's not a simplistic plot line either. This is complex. Nancy? I just want to point out that Naomi didn't give birth to this child. What's that? It was Ruth's baby. Oh, I'm sorry, yes. Ruth's baby, but that was one of the Hebrew ways of expressing things, that this was her son, that she did become his nurse. Right. Next page, okay? Page 6. Thank you for correcting me on that.

Okay, so we have Matthew, Chiasm, and Outline. Christ is King in initiating ministry to the nation of Israel, chapters 1 through 4. And then finally, Christ is Savior in initiating ministry to the church. In Matthew, the first half takes about two years of time, and the second half takes about a year of time. By two years, I exclude the time that Christ is growing up. That's the general pattern. Christ is King and Christ is initiating ministry to Israel. It's going to be King over Israel, right?

Christ is Savior, initiating ministry with the Church in the second half. The Church gets brought up at various points in Matthew in the second half of the Taliban. So we go up from the gospel of the kingdom to the gospel of substitution. from ministry to Israel under law to ministry to the church under grace.

Now, what's very interesting is Matthew has a number of chiasms within it, aside from the whole book being in a chiasm form. And what is the middle of the chiasm in Matthew? The parables. And what's interesting, if you look at the bottom of that page, and that chapter is also in the form of a chiasm. That pivotal chapter is also in the form of a chiasm.

Yes? Do you think it's all written in chiasms because that's the way they thought? Or was it purposely done that way? It was purposely done because that way, That was a way to emphasize something. It was a way to structure it. It was also a way to memorize things, because that's the way they memorized things. They placed a high value on memorizing things.

You would tend not to write things down that your rabbi said you would memorize. This was one of the tools that you made great emphasis with Hassan, because there's such an oral culture still In Uganda, I remember you saying, take advantage of that. It's very similar to the way things were during the Bible, during the time that the Bible was written. What I told Hassan and I tell the guys in Uganda, I said, you're tribal?

They were tribal. What's the woman's role? She gathers the firewood and gets the water. Same for Israel, right? They're in oral culture, you're in oral culture. So whatever is compatible and similar to whatever the Bible has, use that in your teaching. Underscore that. That's going to help people understand better in a lot of different ways. Thanks for bringing that up. Okay, so we have that. Let's take a look at the top of page 7.

Galatians, the book of Galatians is one big chiasm. By the way, New Testament books, Matthew is one, the whole thing is a chiasm. Galatians, the whole thing is a chiasm. Ephesians, the whole thing is a chiasm. Philippians, the whole thing is a chiasm. The letter to Philemon is one big chiasm. The book of Jude is all one big chiasm.

So is the Bible? The Bible is not in a chiasm, however, there are bookend patterns. And that's what I first noticed about Philippians before I noticed it was a chiasm. But for example, the Tree of Life shows up where in the Bible? Genesis and Revelation. Genesis and Revelation and nowhere else, basically. Genesis in the early chapters, Revelation, late chapters. So you've got that there. Satan first shows up where? Genesis chapter 3, Satan is done away with, where? Chapter 20. Third chapter in, Satan shows up on the scene. Third to the last chapter, he's gone.

So you have a number of things like that. And the Psalms is the center. So if you were really looking at that, you could say that a lot of the emphasis is in Psalms, which it is. Yeah. There are some patterns like that. The whole book of Isaiah reflects the structure of the Bible. The Bible has how many books? 66 books, OK? There's 39 Old Testament books, Matthew is the 40th, right? And so what do you have in Matthew is the beginning, here's John the Baptist, right? And he's coming, preparing away, and so we read in Isaiah chapter 40. preparing the way. And so as you go through, most of the book of Isaiah lines up book by book with the Bible books.

So, in answer to your question, it's not a perfect chiasm, but the match is kind of fascinating. So here's Galatians, an intense prologue and an intense epilogue. When I say intense, this is, you know, if someone delivers a gospel other than the one we gave to you, may he be eternally condemned. I repeat, Really intense. So here's that.

The first half of the book of Galatians is mostly about Paul's life, except for the center points, which is about Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. But the first half is mostly about Paul's life. The second half is mostly about the Galatians' life. And then we have the next section there is Paul's life and then your life.

Next section here. So Galatians is one large chiasm. And you can find chiasms inside the chiasm. All right, here is another outline of the Book of Ephesians, chiastic structure of Ephesians. So Paul's commission and salutation are 1, 1, and 2 in Ephesians. Titicus' commission and salutation is 621 through 24. And so it steps through. First you've got heavenly blessing and then you've got heavenly warfare.

Yes? So this is kind of like Cliff Notes of the Bible. Yeah. So we're showing the whole books and seeing the structure of each of the books. And you can imagine, so here's Paul writing. He's imagining this arched doorway. And he's got the outline of what he's going to cover.

And so then I'm going to work this thing out, and I'm going to do the first half mostly about me, and I'm going to do the second half mostly about you. Right into the Galatians. So he's thinking through that, and he says, I think I'll do that, the same thing with Ephesians, and I'll do the same thing with Philippians. Oh yeah, when I write a letter to Philemon, I'll do that too. So you've got this kind of walking through the doorway and going through each of the stones. On the second stone in, I have this topic here.

You asked about the language. At the end of Philippians, in the beginning of Philippians, a lot of repeated words and phrases. In the original language, they are recognizable generally in English too. Alright, so let's look at the last one here. The Book of Philippians is also a chiasm. A good chiasm analysis can be found here. So I didn't reproduce it, but you could look that up if you wanted. I put it in a tiny URL format if you wanted to poke that in. Or when I get it uploaded, you can click on the link and that would be easy if you download it from the website.

Okay. Yeah, Philippians just fascinated me, because I didn't notice at first it was a chiasm, I just noticed there was a lot of repeated words at the beginning of the end. Ah, okay, now I see it. Alright, so here's the book of Jude. Assurance for the Christian, and it ends with assurance for the Christian. The second is believer in faith, and the believer in faith.

Third is apostates described, and apostates described. And fourth, apostasy in the Old Testament history, apostasy in Old Testament prophecy. So anyway, and so what's the pivotal point there? An ancient trio of apostates. So the center of this thing is about apostasy and apostates. But it ends up with a church for the Christian, just like it started. Here are some conclusions that we can draw here.

As one can see, we can find numerous chiasms in scripture from one verse long to whole books. Why are there so many chiasms? How can they help us study God's Word? There are several things to note here. Chiasms emphasize by repetition and by the pivot or center of the passage. Next, chiasm can also be emphasized by contrasting the first half with the second half. I'm going to talk about me and then I'm going to talk about you. So there can be that.

Chiasm is made for memory tool and cross check for copying. As I walk through this thing for copying, did I skip something? I mentioned this here. Make sure that shows up over here. I recognize the chiasm. Make sure you don't miss that one. The small one, make sure you don't miss that word. And then the next one, chiasm is made for an orderly presentation according to the recognized pattern. If I, for example, wanted to be sure to memorize the flood account, I could go through all those things, even the numbers for a chiasm.

I could go through that, and then when it's time to tell my kids, hey look, we've got the deductive documents, deductive documents, deductive documents. Here's the story, right? And you can pass that along in this oral culture, even though they were very literary, they were also an oral culture, and I could pass that along and make sure I told the flood story. Here's how it started and here's how it ended. And here's all the details in between. I got the whole thing and I haven't forgotten anything because I got the whole pattern down. made for an orderly presentation according to a recognized pattern.

And again, our inclination is often to outline, and outlining struggles with a lot of the Bible because they use other things, other structures, aside from our method of doing things. So an outline, though it may be useful, is actually forcing things into a form that fits our modern way of doing things, but is not how they thought and worked through things and memorized things. And then next, chiasm served to help us check our understanding of each part of the passage. I say, oh, that's where he's going with this. Let's say I'm trying to work out a chiasm, and then I say, oh, that's right, I overlooked this. So anyway, it can be helpful.

We have a couple of links. We also included the tiny URL if you'd like to use that. And some additional recommended resources for Hebrew poetry patterns, poetic forms, and chiasm. And so this chiasmus is a PDF file, an Adobe Acrobat file. You can download it for free and it helps explain some of these things. All right. Thoughts? Yes.

QIASM, basically, are a mnemonic. Do you know what a mnemonic is? A mnemonic is just a connection between, say, a verse reference and the verse itself. It's a thing to remember so you can explain all the details underneath it. So that's what a mnemonic is. It's a connection between what you I think the thing is about it is what it actually is about. It's a great mnemonic. Yes, it is.

Justine? Okay, so I don't even know how to say this, but let's say the creation where there's seven. Now, you can't really say that that's chiasm, but since it's seven, can you go to the center of that seven, like the sun, moon, and stars? Does that mean anything? Because that's prophecy. Yeah, that would be something to look at.

It's actually a different pattern that carries from Genesis to Revelation, right? To have sevens, and it's especially in Genesis, and it's also especially in Revelation. And in John. And in the Gospel of John. Seven times, I am, and then some metaphor, I am the bread of life, I am the door, I am the good shepherd. And seven miracles, first of which was the wedding at Cana, turning water into wine. So patterns of seven is something that is particularly Hebrew.

And then, how long is the tribulation period? So what I'm saying is can you take the pattern 7 and look at the center of it and get an emphasis out of that? You could try that and see if it makes sense. I think you'd want to be careful because just 7, and especially with the 7th set apart, in Genesis in the creation account, the 7th is set apart how? Risk.

By God rest, which didn't mean God was exhausted, but meant that God stopped his creation work on the seventh day. But that's prophetic too, because you've got the day of rest, the Sabbath rest. So what did God tell the Jews? They were supposed to work on the sixth and rest on the seventh, right?

And then you get into the book of Revelation, you have seven seal judgments, followed by 7 trumpet judgments, followed by 7 bowl judgments, and between the 6th and the 7th in each one of those set of judgments there is an interlude, the 7th is set apart. So you have a repeated pattern of 6 and then a 7th set apart.

Here's in Genesis. So rather than being in chiasm, it's a different pattern. Yes, and it's particularly a Hebrew pattern. It started in Genesis, it was carried on as, you Jews are going to live this way, and it's carried on. Here's John the Jew writing about the three sets of seven. By the way, three is another key number too. And so three sets of seven in terms of the judgments. And the seventh judgment in each case is set apart by an interlude between six and seven. Well, actually, the seventh, from what I remember, is the interlude. And then it goes on into the next seven judgments.

I could send you something on that, but you've got it all charted out. So it might be helpful. So, yeah, if you look at these things, the reason we're going over them is they're all valuable tools to recognize and see, oh, he's doing this here, and he's doing that here. And then you'll find, here's a figure of speech inside of a Hebrew poetry pattern, which is a part of a chiasm. So all these things help you understand better the author sought after the author. And so the more by language, history, and culture, by understanding those things, the more we can step into the author's and the reader's world. And so we'll continue to stack on more tools like this, so that as we read, we think, oh, I see what he's doing there, I see that, I recognize that, and we begin to think through the thoughts after them and therefore better understand what the author was intending and what he meant for his readers to understand.

And I can see that from the standpoint, Jim was saying about outlining, because it's almost impossible. Because there's so many themes going on simultaneously, and so many different levels. So basically, it seems like the chiasm is saying, okay, just to get your attention, what's really important here, this is what I really want you to remember. Even though all these other themes are going on simultaneously here in this book, this is really the key point.

It's also important for us not to get, because you see them at different scales, not to get too frozen in on the structure of our modern Bibles. One of the things that Craig will be going over with you is the book of Ephesians, particularly at 5.18 through 6.10.

And what happens is we break it up by chapter, we break it up by verses, and we put headings like husbands and wives and all that. And it keeps us from really seeing what Paul intended his readers to understand. And so as we look at things, we want to look at it and pick the chapters and verses out in some cases. in order to get those out of the way and see, here's what is really going on here. And all of a sudden, oh, I start seeing things that I had no idea before because of all the way things are broken up. And anything that I do that is more from our own culture, our own methods of analysis, those can end up messing with what was intended.

Messinger was, and even just, we'll be looking at one at the end of today's main service message. You know, the translations have, I pray that the eyes of your hearts, you know, may be opened, and it's actually a perfect tense. I pray that the eyes of your hearts haven't been opened. Bing! Different message altogether, right?

And so by having these tools, we begin to say, oh, I get it. He's using this figure of speech, faith to faith, glory to glory. Oh, he means increasing. And I look at it, oh, here's a chiasm that starts with the Lord as the Spirit and ends with the Lord as the Spirit. And here's the turning point, the glory of the Lord. And so what is he emphasizing? He emphasizes by repetition. and by the turning point, even though the turning point is only mentioned once, it's still emphasized because it's the middle, it's the keystone.

So you start to see it, and then you say, wait a minute, Glory to Glory is a figure of speech, and I also start looking at it and say, wait a minute, he's got the mirrors in there, why did he include the mirrors? Well, there's two places where Paul has mirrors, those are both the letters to the Corinthians, and he doesn't mention them to anyone else. So you start to look for these things and get a heightened sense of, oh this is what he was wanting to get across. And understanding Paul's thinking and understanding how the readers would see it, rather than how can we form this thing to come up with our own modern and concocted ideas.

Thank you, Lord, for your word. Thank you for the richness and the depth that is there and the significance of everything that you put there on purpose because you love us and you care for us and you want us to know you. And we just pray in Jesus' name. Amen.