Structure of Genesis 1:14-19

Some Bible scholars believe the story of Creation Day 4 in Genesis 1:14-19 is told in the form of a chiasm. A chiasm is a literary device much like a paragraph, in that it functions as a means of structuring the content of a piece of writing. A chiasm contains three or more statements arranged in inverse order. That means the first statement of the chiasm corresponds somehow to the last. The second corresponds to the next to last, and so on. The middle statement or statements of the chiasm are meant to stand out, as if they were being underlined and bold-faced.

If Genesis 1:14-19 were arranged in our Bible in chiasm form, it would look like this:

Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky:
a. to separate the day from the night (serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years) - v. 14
b. to give light on the earth - v. 15b
c. to govern the day - v. 16a
c. to govern the night - v. 16b
b. to give light on the earth - v. 17
a. to separate light from darkness (to govern the day and night) - v. 18

When you look carefully at the text, you'll notice that things don't match up perfectly; nevertheless, it's close enough to be noticed. I want to give credit to a footnote in "The New American Commentary: Genesis 1-11:26" by Kenneth A. Matthews for bringing this chiasm to my attention.

I boldfaced the two statements in the middle, because they are the main points of the chiasm, as I explained before about the way chiasms are structured. In other words, Moses wanted our minds to be drawn to the role the sun and moon were to designed to play as the dominant features of the day and nighttime sky respectively.

Someone may ask, why would God go to so much trouble to indicate something that seems so obvious? Is there really any question in anyone's mind about which heavenly body dominates the daytime sky? Or which one dominates the nighttime sky?

Read tomorrow's post to learn more...