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| - Chiasmus is a poetic form that is common in ancient Hebrew texts. It is a parallelism in structure rather than rhyme, a parallelism of thought or idea. Bishop Lowth, whose lectures on Hebrew poetry in 1741 first introduced the name 'parallelism' for [the Hebrew] poetic style, pointed out that this structure, based as it is on meaning, survives translation into the prose of any language with remarkably little loss, unlike the poetry that relies on complex metre or or a special vocabulary. An example of chiasmus is found in Psalms 3:7-8:
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| abstract
| - Chiasmus is a poetic form that is common in ancient Hebrew texts. It is a parallelism in structure rather than rhyme, a parallelism of thought or idea. Bishop Lowth, whose lectures on Hebrew poetry in 1741 first introduced the name 'parallelism' for [the Hebrew] poetic style, pointed out that this structure, based as it is on meaning, survives translation into the prose of any language with remarkably little loss, unlike the poetry that relies on complex metre or or a special vocabulary. There are several forms of Hebrew poetic parallelism. Chiasmus refers to synthetic parallelism, which is the building up of thought, with each succeeding line adding to the first. The word chiasmus comes from the Greek letter chi, which resembles the letter X. In this poetic form, the lines creating the parallelisms form an X. This is also called inverted parallelism. An example of chiasmus is found in Psalms 3:7-8: Save me, O my God, for thou has smitten all my enemies on the cheek bone; The teeth of the wicked thou has broken; to Jehovah, the salvation. The words in these two, seemingly unpoetic lines, occur in a peculiar sequence. Everything is said twice, and in the repetition, everything is said backwards. (a) Save me, (b) O my God (c) for thou hast smitten (d) all my enemies (e) on the cheekbone (e) The teeth (d) of the wicked (c) thou hast broken (b) to Jehovah (a) the salvation This example is a simple chiasm; others are far more complex. Chiasm is not just simple repetition it also involves an intensification or an aspect of completion in the second half. Chiastic form can give order, emphasis, and completeness to longer passages, such as in the 58th psalm.
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