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1. Investigating Structure 27
The article by W.G.E. Watson is much more circumspect. 1 He first
defines in a helpful way the terms he intends to use—hemistich, colon
(a single line of poetry), strophe (verse unit made up of one or more
cola) and so on—and then gives a brief account of 'Strophic Chiasmus'.
The terms he uses are:
1. Pure or mirror chiasmus: abc//cba, where the a's are almost
identical;
2. Complete chiasmus: ab//ba (strictly ab//b'a'); abc//cba; etc.
3. Split member chiasmus: a-bc//bc-a; etc.
4. Partial chiasmus: abc//cb; ab-c//ba-c; etc. 2
As well as straightforward structural chiasmus he notes some other
types:
1. 'Skewed chiasmus'—'after the midpoint [it] begins its way
back, only to plunge forward briefly once more, and then, in
the last line, offers a set of simultaneous balances in several
media which psychologically brings us all the way home'. 3
2. Assonantal chiasmus. This includes (a) texts containing both
chiasmus and assonance; (b) texts with a chiastic pattern of
root consonants (e.g. Jer. 5.25; 16.6).
3. Semantic-sonant chiasmus. Here one pair of words corresponds
because they are similar in meaning; the other pair is
similar in sound (e.g. Eccl. 7.la, Dtf 3d //no jntfn, 'A good
name is better than good perfume').
4. Gender chiasmus, which is obtained by the layout of the
gender of the nouns used (e.g. Prov. 20.9, 'Young men's
glory [f.] is their strength [m.], But old men's splendour [m.]
their grey hair [f.]'). 4
1. The Society for Old Testament Study Book List found it 'unusually
convincing'.
2. 'Chiastic Patterns in Biblical Hebrew Poetry', in Welch (ed.), Chiasmus in
Antiquity, pp. 118-68 (123-26).
3. Quoting W.L. Holladay, 'Poetic Passages of Jeremiah', JBL 85 (1966),
pp. 432-33.
4. J. Magonet also refers to gender chiasmus in 'Isaiah 2.1—4.6: Some Poetic
Structures and Tactics', Amsterdamse cahiers voor exegese 3 (1982), pp. 82-83.
He notes Condamin's observation that Isa. 3.18-23 contains groups of nouns, 8 + 5
+ 8. The first eight have the genders:
3m. + 3f. + m. + f., and the last: 3f. + 3m. + f. + m.