Discovering Chiasms Challenge #5 from Genesis 12

This is the fifth analysis in the Discovering Chiasms Challenge series, intended to help you develop your pattern recognition skills using the Bible while having fun at the same time. (See my article What is a Chiasm? if you are already confused.) The four previous analyses included multiple verses which presented some complexity in itself. This is just a single verse based on a chiasm found in Chiasmus in the New Testament: A Study in the Form and Function of Chiastic Structuresby Nils Lund.

See if you can find the structure in the following verses. Click on "Show Structure" once you have your answer. Then click on "Analysis: Why is it there?" to compare your analysis with mine. I suggest that the Personal Reflection at the end of the lesson may be the most important part of this series.

16b … and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels. (Gen 12:16 ESV)

A  Sheep and oxen   B  male donkeys     C  male servants     C′  female servants   B′  female donkeys A′  camels

Analysis: Why is it there?
I hope you easily identified this chiasm. The animals of burden are paired together (A and A′), the donkeys (literally asses) in B and B′, and then the two genders of servants in the center. The more important question with each chiastic structure is, "Why is it there?"

I exhausted several ideas before concluding that, while there is a center point, there is no clear point of emphasis. Here is a record of my thoughts:

1. With the male/male on one side of the chiasm and the female/female on the other, I was immediately curious if there was a gender emphasis to this chiasm. I checked the nouns sheep, oxen and camel in the Hebrew – two are masculine and one is feminine. That's not it. Then it occurred to me that sheep, oxen and camels would be both male and females – that's how reproduction works.
2. My next observation was that this verse does not support the thought that God sees men as dominant or greater than women. Chiastic structures are the shape of a bell curve – both the ascending and descending sides are given equal emphasis. If the males are on the ascending side and the females on the other, there is equal emphasis to both. Therefore God, when inspiring the Bible, did not mention male servants and then female servants to show inequality of the sexes.
3. Confused as to why the male and female servants were the center of this chiasm, I did a Bible search using possibly the best comprehensive reference. Bible Hub for Genesis 12:16 – Commentary section. I read ten well-known Bible resources with the eye, "Why is it there?" Nothing there that I saw.
4. The chiasm points towards the middle where the people are identified as servants. Animals are important but people are more important to the Lord; God gave man dominion over the animals. Yet somehow that does not provide me with a substantive emphasis for the enter.
5. The six items that Pharaoh gave to Abram show the extent of his gratitude for Sarai, as one would pay the owner for a nice Mercedes. Earlier in Genesis 12, the Lord had promised Abram that he and the many that would follow him would be blessed. But in this brief encounter with Pharaoh, Abram relied on deceit rather than the Lord for his provision and blessings. I concluded that the six items reveal the abundance of what Pharaoh provided.

Therefore, I suggest that this chiasm does not seem to use the center point emphasis that is characteristic of many chiastic structures. To me, even though it has the literary structure of a chiasm, it would have nearly the same literary impact if it is viewed as a list, like a grocery list.

I included this simplistic chiasm as an illustration that not all chiasms are valuable when looking for emphasis.



Personal Reflection: In what ways do you help set the people free?

---

---

---

Would you consider rating each of these "Discovering Chiasms Challenge" quizzes? Based on the feedback that you provide and that of others, I would like to indicate to others if a quiz is one star (* which means very easy) or up to five stars (***** which means very difficult. Your input in the comment section will be much appreciated.