The Chiasm of Chaos

I've always been a good student. I got good grades in school. Well...all except for that one "F" in typing. I didn't pay attention to what I was doing because I thought I already knew how to type and so I bombed the final. I can still hear my Dad fussing at me in disgust..."Typing!! Son, fail something important...fail Math, fail English, but don't fail Typing!!!" It was the only failing grade I got.

But just because I good good grades doesn't mean I enjoyed every subject. I liked Math, I liked Science, I LOVED History, I tolerated English. Especially when it came to identifying figures of speech and rhetorical themes and devices. It wasn't until I went back to seminary that I started to learn about these themes and devices in the Bible.

One such figure of speech is something called a chiasm. Chiastic structure, or chiastic pattern, is a literary technique in narrative motifs and other textual passages. These often symmetrical patterns are commonly found in ancient literature such as the epic poetry of the Iliad and the Odyssey. We run across one of these in Leviticus 26. Here's what I learned from the Chiasm of Chaos.

Highlight:

Entire Passage

Explain:

In Leviticus 26, the passage lays out pretty simply. This is a group of people who were nomadic slaves on the run from their oppressors until God met with them and called them and made them His people.

He instructed them on how they were to worship Him, how they were to interact with Him through the Tabernacle. Now they come to nearing the entrance to the land. This was the culmination of a promise about 500 years in the making. All of it led up to this moment. God made it very clear to them. All that was necessary for them to achieve all that God wanted for them was to obey His voice. To obey Him and keep His commandments and the promises of God would lead them right to where He wanted them to be. They would achieve all that God wanted and the works that He would do among them would be “awe-inspiring.” God means to bless this people if they walk in obedience.

He promises:

1. Food

2. Abundance of harvest

3. Peace

4. Security form animals

5. Victory in battle

6. Fruitful and Multiply

7. Fattening

He then gives the consequences of disobedience. These consequences would be at once catastrophic and chaotic.

1. Disease

2. failure of harvest

3. Defeat in battle

4. Wild Animals Attack

5. Sword

6. Pestilence destroys harvest

7. Famine (even eating your own children)

See the pattern? There is a corollary in all the consequences and the benefits of obedience and disobedience. The consequence is in the reverse order of benefits.

• Fattening <> Disease

• Abundance of Harvest <> Failure of Harvest

• Victory <> Defeat

• Protection from wild animals <> Animals attack

• Peace <> Sword

• Abundance of harvest <> Pestilence destroys harvest

• Food <> Terrible Famine

This is a literary device called a chiasm. Anytime it is done, the point of the whole list is in between the two lists and made to be amplified. What do we read between the two lists?

'“I will turn to you, make you fruitful and multiply you, and confirm my covenant with you. You will eat the old grain of the previous year and will clear out the old to make room for the new. I will place my residence among you, and I will not reject you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, so that you would no longer be their slaves. I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to live in freedom. “But if you do not obey me and observe all these commands — if you reject my statutes and despise my ordinances, and do not observe all my commands — and break my covenant, then I will do this to you: I will bring terror on you — wasting disease and fever that will cause your eyes to fail and your life to ebb away. You will sow your seed in vain because your enemies will eat it. ' Leviticus 26:9-16

The point of all of this is that God is faithful to the covenant and He wants them to walk in that obedience as well.

Apply:

The sad truth is that Israel could not walk in obedience to God’s law, and they experienced every last one of these consequences recorded in the Old Testament. God is always faithful to His word. Faithfulness in this context meant bringing about the consequences of their sin.

Our sins have consequences as well. God longs for us to be His people, but our sin precluded our fellowship with HIm. Without the presence of Jesus the God-man and His death on the cross, we would be forever immersed in the consequences of our sins. But God has forgiven our sins as we turned to Him (just as the passage says) and we walk in faith believing that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross takes the punishment for our sin.

In my other discipleship group I read Galatians 1-3 today which is all about refuting the heresy of continuing to live rigorously by the law after we have come to Christ.

This is precisely what was happening in Galatians. There were those who were telling the church they had to abide by the Jewish law. But even the Jews couldn’t abide by their own law. Only Christ is perfect and our only and perfect hope is in the One who fulfilled the law completely for us and we walk in faith believing His promise and now our obedience is not rooted in salvation but in loving service to the One who has redeemed us.

Respond:

Jesus thank You for your death on the cross. Help me to walk in obedience out of love for Your sacrifice. Thank You for delivering me from the curse of the law!