What's the deal with the structure?

Last Sunday, we covered Psalm 106, and we saw how the psalm was laid out:

Praise (1-3)

   Request (4-5)

      Israel forgot, but God saved (6-12)

         Israel’s résumé of rebellion (13-39)

      Israel angered, but God remembered (40-46)

   Request (47)

Praise (48)

This kind of literary structure is called a chiasm (KEE-asm, or a "chiastic" structure), and they are actually pretty common in both the Old and New Testaments. I try not to "nerd it up" too much during a sermon with terms like this (only when I feel it will really be helpful), so I didn't mention what this structure was called or why they are important. The name "chiasm" comes from the Greek word for the letter "x," which is "chi," because the structure resembles the left half of the letter "x."

Why does Scripture have them, and why so frequently? First, it's a nice literary device - it's parallel and balanced, it reinforces ideas, and it organizes the point being made. Second, it helps set off one section of Scripture from another. The chiasm should be treated as a unit, somewhat distinct from what precedes and what follows. It helps us to know which ideas belong together, and we should study chiasms as a group, rather than separated into parts. You fully understand the point when you take it all together.

Third, a majority of the original audience of Scripture were listeners and not readers. They didn't have chapter numbers, verse numbers, or helpful paragraph headings. You can't always hear where a paragraph ends, for example. Literary structures like parallelism, transitional phrases, and chiasms help a listening audience know how the book is organized and how the thoughts go together.

Chiasms are important because, as noted earlier, they help us to know how best to study Scripture well. Literary units should most often be studied as units. Chiasms are also important because they help draw our attention to the center of the chiasm. In this case, the author draws our attention to the "résumé of rebellion," the large center section of the psalm. That's the author's teaching tool - Israel's repeatedly errant history. The other parts of the psalm help us to put that history in perspective and what to do about it.

That's why we started the sermon from the inside and worked our way out.

There's always a wise caution with chiasms, though. Some people go crazy with them - finding them where they don't really exist in Scripture, trying to make too big of a deal of how the structure affects the meaning of the passage, and so on. Structures like chiasms are helpful literary devices, not magic keys to unlock the "true" meaning of Scripture.

It's OK to "nerd it up" in the newsletter, right?