Chiasmus: Unique Presentations of the Lord’s Word

Chiasmus is an inverted parallelism; it is a presentation of a series of words or thoughts followed by a second presentation of similar words or thoughts, but in reverse order. There are hundreds of chiasms of various sizes in the Old Testament; more than one hundred exist in the book of Isaiah alone. Chiasmus size varies; many are as small as four lines, and others comprise entire chapters (e.g., 1 Kgs. 17–19). The ancient prophets often used chiasmus to reveal the lord’s words unto individuals, peoples, and nations. The prophets also present many of their prophecies of Jesus Christ in chiastic form.

An example of a simple chiasmus is Isaiah 5:20, where the terms evil and good are presented once and then again in reverse order. Isaiah 5:20 then presents two other simple chiasms: darkness/light/light/darkness followed by bitter/sweet/sweet/bitter. Another example is Isaiah 6:10, where the words heart, ears, and eyes are presented and then repeated in reverse order.

Chiasmus serves a variety of purposes: (1) its structure encourages and enhances learning or memorization of the chiasmus, because scriptural students can memorize the first presentation of words and then the same again in reverse order; (2) the repetition of the key points or concepts in a chiasmus naturally serve to emphasize certain points; and (3) each chiasmus lends an artistic or poetic quality to the text that makes it aesthetically pleasing to the reader.

The chiasms presented in the chart could easily be multiplied. The following seven examples are formatted (including underlining key expressions) to make them more readable and pleasing to the eye.