Finding The Hidden Treasure In Genesis

Would you rather listen than read? Listen here.

Studying Genesis

I have had so much fun studying to teach Genesis. God is showing up in ways I never imagined and revealing His character to me in ways I never thought possible. While studying I have learned about chiasms, and wow, they have opened up a whole new world to me.

I bet you are asking what is a chiasm. I certainly did. Well, a chiasm is a literary technique that allows the reader to discover something. It’s kind of like a hidden treasure. A way of writing that draws you to another level of the story. I know it sounds mysterious. Chiasms bring the story to life.

I wish I could say I see them pop off the page at me, but they are getting easier with practice. Once they become visible, because someone points them out to me, they often bring me to tears. It’s like seeing a field of flowers and you take in the beauty, but if you get closer and examine a single flower in the field, you see its uniqueness and see the intricate detail.

Chiasms

Chiasms are written in various ways. Some chiasms are visual in that the words on the page make a shape. This is easier to see if you look in the original Hebrew texts. Some chiasms will have parallels in them, like the days in creation parallel. Day one God created light which parallels with Day four, where God creates the sun and the moon. Day two, God creates the sky and the water, which parallels with Day 5 when He creates the birds and the fish. And finally, day three, the land appears and this parallels with day six when animals and mankind appear who live on the land.

The mirror chiasms are my favorite because they point to something, the hidden treasure. These are stories you can fold in half and the center of the story is where you most often find the hidden message.

Mirror Chiasms

For instance, the story of Abraham has many aspects that mirror. If you break down the story, you find it begins and ends with genealogies. It begins with the genealogy of Terah, Abraham’s father, (which would be the first A in the diagram below). And ends with the genealogy of Nahor, Abrahams bother (which would be the second A in the diagram below).

If you keep reading, you will find just after the first genealogy you find the promise from God to Abraham of a son (this would be the first B below). Then, just before the final genealogy (the second B), you find the birth of that son, Isaac. The story keeps moving inward, with many more levels than shown in the diagram. But, if you folded the story in half, you would find at the very center the covenant God made with Abraham.

Covenants

This Abrahamic covenant, as with all covenants, are based on God’s promise rather than on human actions. This covenant with Abraham is seen as a precursor to the New Covenant of grace that is established through Jesus’ life, death, burial and resurrection, which offers salvation as a gift of grace.

Do you see how powerful this is? At the core of the story of Abraham, the author points us to Jesus. And guess what, the stories of the other patriarchs do the same thing. Do you find this as incredible as I do? So many of the stories when we read them at surface level have meaning, but when we go that little bit further, we watch it come alive and we see the promise of Jesus throughout the scriptures in ways I never could have imagined.

I Invite You

If you are not in my Genesis study, I invite you to join in. It’s not too late. I’ve recorded everything we have done so far, so you have not missed a thing. I would love to show you these beautiful treasures throughout the book of Genesis. You will be amazed at all we discover.

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