THE LITERARY STRUCTURE
OF THE BOOK OF EXODUS 1-18:
six pericopes and their chiastic lexical relation: introduction.

It is found as a result of the theocentric method research that in the level of the thematic content of pericopes, the literary structure of Exo 1-18 is a concentric one; thus, it has a feature typical for Hebrew literary compositions.

It turns out that such a concentric structure is hidden deeper – in the lexical level, namely:

if in each of the six pericopes separately, one examines the number of Hebrew words occurring in one of the two groups chosen in the comprehensive research:

  1. forms of future tenses: either in the imperfect or in the perfect with waw consecutive, or in the imperative,
  2. forms of past tenses: either in the perfect or in the imperfect with waw consecutive,

the following results are obtained [1]:

 words in
past tenses
*@v?{?pw}*
words in
future tenses
*@v?{?ivq}*
words in
past tenses
  in relation to sum of  
two groups of tenses
(in %)
words in
future tenses
in relation to sum of
two groups of tenses
(in %)
sum
I26416462 %38 %100 %
II25320056 %44 %100 %
III6011035 %65 %100 %
 IV 713666 %34 %100 %
V332656 %44 %100 %
VI1599862 %38 %100 %

These relations can also be presented in the bar graph form – it is shown in the next step of this presentation.


[1]  In the table, in the headings of columns 2. and 3., it is given the form of the command entered in Command Center in Bible Works 6.0 for WTM.