Jerome Walsh (in Style and Structure in Biblical Hebrew Narrative ) points out the chiastic structure of Gen 12:6b: Pharaoh gives Abram “flocks-and-herds/jackasses/men servants//women servants/jenny asses/camels.” This arrangement highlights the gift of slaves to Abram, anticipating the “gift” of Hebrew slaves to Moses in the exodus. Abram leaves Egypt not only with wealth, but with a company of liberated slaves.
Further, Walsh suggests that the whole episode has a chiastic structure:
A. Abram goes to Egypt
B. Sarai taken
C. Pharaoh gives gifts
C’. Pharaoh suffers plagues
B’. Pharaoh returns Sarai
A’. Abram returns
The transfer of slaves from Egypt to Abram is at the center of the whole “exodus” story.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Deliver Us from Evil
In a recent New York Times article entitled “Freedom With a Side of Guilt: How Food Delivery…
Natural Law Needs Revelation
Natural law theory teaches that God embedded a teleological moral order in the world, such that things…
Letters
Glenn C. Loury makes several points with which I can’t possibly disagree (“Tucker and the Right,” January…
