Isaiah Study Materials
Isaiah 43:8 – 44:11 is a chiastic unit
There is an introductory discussion of this fold-over or chiastic unit of Isaiah below on, on this web page.
A mathematical investigation of this unit is found under the Resources Tab of this website, on the “Parents and Youth Group Resources page. You will need to further click the button “View or Download Math Presentation” on that page.
However, you might want to check out the charts on the Sections of Isaiah page (see link below) before jumping into mathematical details.
Have you struggled trying to read the Book of Isaiah because it seems like it is completely random? I want to begin by assuring you that Isaiah is a highly ordered, highly structured Biblical text. It is magnificent! Have you ever asked yourself (or better, the Lord), “What was Isaiah following as he wrote?” Repeat that question and ask that question a couple of times. I did, for a very long time. This webpage can help you!
The most direct answer is that Isaiah wrote along a theme-line that expresses a Spiritual return to knowledge of God, and fellowship with God, by drawing near to God through Jesus Christ or Yeshua, and that he did so using chiastic poetry bounded by verses which contain the Hebrew root words for “near” and “far.”
This statement requires some unpacking, which this website will help provide. Many or most people have never heard the word “chiastic” and this word will be explained using examples in this website. Also, there are other bounding or inclusio verses in the text, so the above statement is not the entire picture. Perhaps you have never tried to read Isaiah, and you found your way here. I hope that this website will be a great help to you!
Reasons for reading difficulty
There are two main structurally related reasons why you may have had difficulties “getting out of the gate” in reading Isaiah. First is that there are Menorah structures in the composition. Menorah patterns are a literary structure that Isaiah is following.
For a two page article on the Menorah patterns click here or the link button below.
Second, the chapter numbers assigned in the Middle Ages do not align with the reflective, or fold-over, or chiastic structures in the scroll. As an example, Isaiah 43:8 – 44:11 is one of many of these fold-over structures. The chart below shows the evidence for this one section in a variety of ways, including the word evidence and topical parallelisms. This is complex, but one of the main points in that the stanza verse count structure is also chiastic, or 6 – 4 – 4 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 (and there are reasons why this is not a perfect 6 – 5 – 4 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 pattern).
So you see, if you are looking for thoughts (or paragraphs so to speak) that start at Isaiah 43:1 or Isaiah 44:1, you will never find them because they are not there.
The book ISAIAH REVISTED, A Structural View outlines all of these structures in Isaiah, but it does so right in the text of Isaiah in a non-obtrusive way so that the reader can stay primarily focused on the Scripture itself.
Fold-over structure of Isaiah 43:8 - 44:11
Perhaps the world is telling you something different… that the book of Isaiah is just a bunch of malarky. Do you really think that tens of thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of intelligent and skillful scribes and monks expended their lives to preserve a scroll, over a period of 2,700 years, which was randomly written? Wouldn’t it make sense to you that something cherished and preserved like this, at the center of our civilization, is worth understanding? Let’s go to work.
Links to further Isaiah Bible Studies are forthcoming
