The Whole Bible is Versified

..from the free commentary which you can download at http://sites.google.com/site/freecommentary.

Summary: 'Chiasms' are 'crossover' paragraphs which repeat, in the second half, the initial thoughts, but in reverse order. All the authors, and all the books, in both Old and New Testaments, show such structured versification, in all chapters, with some clever variations. When we don't easily recognise this unusual verse-structure, it accounts for what we see as 'tedious repetition' in the Old Testament, and the notoriously 'long and complicated Pauline sentences', plus it resolves the ambiguity of the prophecies, the chronology of events and the meanings of words. Needless to say, it speaks volumes about the coherence of the Bible across millennia, and of its quality.
Here is a minimal example of a 'crossover' construction:

Mat 6:34 Be not therefore anxious for the morrow: for the morrow will be anxious for itself.
The underlined ideas are repeated in the matching indents: Here is a longer example, from the 'wisdom discourse' in the book of Job. It is in the form of twinned chiasms -- the one matching the other, in mirrored fashion (e.g. 12-14 matches 20-22) -with 15-19 housing another sub-pair.

Job 28:1 Surely there is a mine for silver, And a place for gold which they refine. 2 Iron is taken out of the earth, And copper is molten out of the stone. 3 Man puts an end to darkness, And searches out, to its furthest bound, To find the stones of obscurity and the treasures of thick darkness. 4 He breaks open a shaft

away from where men sojourn; Their paths are unknown to the traveller The miners hang afar from men, they swing to and fro. 5 As for the earth, out of it comes bread; And underneath it is churned up as it were by fire. 6 The stones thereof are the place of sapphires, And it has dust of gold. 7 That path, no bird of prey knows, Neither has the falcon's eye seen it: 8 The proud beasts have not trodden it, Nor has the fierce lion passed thereby. 9 He [Man, 13] puts forth his hand upon the flinty rock; He overturns the mountains by the roots. 10 He cuts out channels among the rocks; And his eye sees every precious thing. 11 He binds the streams that they trickle not; And the thing that is hid he brings forth to light. 12 But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? 13 Man knows not the price thereof; Neither is it found in the land of the living. 14 The deep says, It is not in me; And the sea says, It is not with me. 15 It cannot be gotten for gold, Neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. 16 It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, With the precious onyx, or the sapphire. 17 Gold and glass cannot equal it, Neither shall it be exchanged for jewels of fine gold. 18 No mention shall be made of coral or of crystal: Yea, the price of wisdom is above rubies. 19 The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, Neither shall it be valued with pure gold. 20 From where then, comes wisdom? And where is the place of understanding? 21 Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, And kept close guarded from the birds of the heavens. 22 Destruction and Death say, We have only heard a rumor thereof with our ears. 23 God understands the way thereof, And he knows the place thereof.

24 For he looks to the ends of the earth, And sees under the whole heaven; 25 To make a weight for the wind: Yea, he metes out the waters by measure. 26 When he made a decree for the rain, And a way for the lightning of the thunder; 27 Then did he see it, and declare it; [because He knows] He established it, yea, [because He alone is sure of understanding] and searched it out. [3] 28 And unto man he said, [13] Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; And to depart from evil is understanding.
Such ordering of thoughts makes it easier to memorise for recital, and allows for literary devices such as delaying illuminating information until the matching thought. This example also illustrates how the final line is often set aside for the punchline. Chiasms can be overlapped with and inter-locked with an independent chiasm, or with another sort of versification. They can be interleaved with and/or combined with couplets and parallelisms. They can run on, across many chapters of similar material, using repetitive organisation. Here is the Messianic Psalm 140 which has two parallel, matching halves,

evil man violent man devise mischiefs poison is under their lips wicked; purposed to thrust aside my steps set gins salvation the desires of the wicked his evil device mischief of their own lips evil hunt to overthrow him The upright shall dwell in thy presence
..as follows...

Psa 140:1 Deliver me, O Jehovah, from the evil man; from the violent man: Preserve me

2 Who devise mischiefs in their heart; Continually do they gather themselves together for war. 3 They have sharpened their tongue like a serpent; Adders' poison is under their lips. [11] Selah 4 Keep me, O Jehovah, from the hands of the wicked; from the violent man: [11] Preserve me Who have purposed to thrust aside my steps. 5 The proud have hid a snare for me, and cords; They have spread a net by the wayside; gins [traps] They have set for me. Selah [cf hunt to overthrow, 11] 6 I said unto Jehovah, Thou art my God: Give ear, O Jehovah. unto the voice of my supplications 7 O Jehovah the Lord, the strength of my salvation, Thou hast covered my head in the day of battle. 8 Grant not, O Jehovah, the desires of the wicked; [cf evil, violent] his evil device, [cf devise mischief] Further not lest they exalt themselves. Selah

9 As for the head of those that compass me about, Let the mischief of their own lips cover them. [cf poison-tongue] 10 Let fall upon them burning coals: into the fire, Let them be cast Into deep pits, whence they shall not rise. [cf wicked, violent] 11 An evil speaker shall not be established in the earth: the violent man Evil shall hunt to overthrow him. [proud, snares, traps] 12 I know that Jehovah will maintain the cause of the afflicted, And justice for the needy. 13 Surely the righteous shall give thanks unto thy name: The upright shall dwell in thy presence.
..but the second half is also reverse matched with the first, making it chiasmatic.

Psa 140:1 evil man; violent man: 2 mischiefs, war. 3 tongue, lips. 4 wicked; violent 5 snare for me, cords; a net, gins set 6 Jehovah, my supplications 7 O Jehovah, strength, covered my head 8 Jehovah, the desires of the wicked; exalt themselves. 9 head, cover 10 pits 11 An evil speaker the violent man, Evil 12 the cause of the afflicted, 13 righteous, upright
Note too that many of the verses are mini-chiasms in themselves:

For the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David.

Psa 140:1 Deliver me, O Jehovah, from the evil man; from the violent man: Preserve me [for I am righteous, 13] 2 Who devise mischiefs [injustices, 12] in their heart; Continually do they gather themselves together for war. 3 They have sharpened their tongue like a serpent; Adders' poison is under their lips. [11] Selah 4 Keep me, O Jehovah, from the hands of the wicked; from the violent man: [11] Preserve me Who have purposed to thrust aside my steps. 5 The proud have hid a snare for me, and cords; They have spread a net by the wayside; gins They have set for me. Selah [cf pits, 10] 6 I said unto Jehovah, You art my God: Give ear, O Jehovah. unto the voice of my supplications 7 O Jehovah the Lord, the strength of my salvation, You hast covered my head [with salvation; answered prayer; cf 9] in the day of battle. 8 Grant not, O Jehovah, the desires of the wicked; [= his supplications, cf 6] his evil device, Further not

lest they exalt themselves. [due to answered prayers] Selah 9 As for the head of those that compass me about, Let the mischief of their own lips cover them. 10 Let fall upon them burning coals: into the fire, Let them be cast Into deep pits, [pit-traps] whence they shall not rise. 11 An evil speaker shall not be established in the earth: the violent man Evil shall hunt to overthrow him. 12 I know that Jehovah will maintain the cause of the afflicted, And justice for the needy. [in times of war, 2, 7] 13 Surely the righteous shall give thanks unto thy name: The upright shall dwell in thy presence.
The chiasms of the books of Moses (1400BC) predate Homer (Iliad, Odyssey), Virgil (Aeneid) and Aristotle (340BC). Chiasmatic arrangement is an ancient prophetic style. To understand chiasms is almost like entering into the language patterns used by the Holy Spirit. To miss them, is like removing all punctuation and paragraphs and setting out. If you are not aware of chiasms it is easy to lose the thread of the argument through the apparent swapping of topics. The thoughts initially appear to be dis-jointed, but when you appreciate the structure, you can see that things are very nicely arranged, and even more carefully 'jointed' than you imagined. What appear to be two separate points are pleasingly connected into one idea. And the point is made doubly clear.

Interpetation

A most interesting thing about chiasms is that they make to be parallel, things

which you would not normally recognise as being the same, but when you see the chiasm you cannot help but agree that they are the same. E.g. You would not normally define 'heavens' as 'things invisible' and 'earth' as 'things visible', but you cannot disagree with the equivalence --

Col 1:16 in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible,
The full commentary has many more examples laid out for you, and a longer discussion of the place of chiasms. Here is an example of how helpful chiasms can be for interpretation: Psalm 46 depends on imagery for its pairings. From verse 3= verse 6, we can see that waters=nations, and that mountains=kingdoms, as in the rest of the Bible;

1 God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble. 2 the earth changes 2 mountains are shaken 3 the waters thereof roar 3 mountains tremble 4 city of God 5 God is in the midst of her 5 She shall not be moved 6 The nations raged 6 the kingdoms were moved 6 the earth melted 7 Jehovah of hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our refuge.
For those who just want a readable but accurate Bible... One of the best reasons to recognise chiasms, is that once you see the blocks of related thoughts as a paragraph, then the story requires little further explanation. This is especially so in the history narratives, but is also helpful in the difficult theological arguments. The missing requirement is simply to visibly set out the chiasms in verse. The full commentary has done this for each chapter of the New Testament, and for most of the Old Testament. A New Testament reading version is included. Soon a properly laid out separate version of the whole Bible, for reading purposes, will be made available.

This layout allows a melding of an easy to read rendition of the Bible, with a literally accurate version -- The versified structure is easy to follow, even pleasant to read, yet the stilted language of a literal version is broken up into meaningful phrases, easy to digest. For the Bible-students... There are implications for those wanting to interpret syntax: Chiasms supply a phrase marking which is akin to case marking. Case-markers show which words are tied to which words, such as an adjective and a noun, but chiasms show which phrases match with which other phrases, such as the subject and a nounphrase delimiting the subject. Here the subject is made plain in verse 7 (it is not 'Melchizedek'):

5 So Christ also glorified not himself to be made a high priest, but he [appointed him] that spake unto him, You art my Son, This day have I begotten thee: 6 as he says also in another place, You art a priest for ever After the order of Melchizedek. 7 Who [=Christ, 5] in the days of his flesh, having offered up [as priest] prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears ...
Here is another example, which is easily misread, as 'the veil is his flesh' instead of 'his sprinkled blood is from the sacrifice of his own flesh':

19 Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy place by the [sacrificial] blood of Jesus, 20 by the way which he dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, [into the most holy place] that is to say, his flesh; [sacrificed] 21 and having a great priest over the [holy] house of God;
The grammarian's dogma is that Greek word order is 'flexible', because each

word 'carries its own case-marking', which is true enough; but the extra insight about Biblical Greek syntax is that the phrase order is tightly controlled, to function within chiasms and parallelisms. Hebrew also has the same careful placement, but we expect that. Chiasms explain why the Greek syntax seems so disorderly to our ears, whereas actually, the phrases are grammatically marked by their placement.

Versification
When some people see that the Bible is versified, they will complain that it is obviously a made-up story, 'because no-body could possibly talk in verse'. But this is not so. God is involved, after all. When I see the versification of scripture, it adds to my respect for its inspiration, simply because most men of themselves would never speak like that. Chiasms don't make prophecy, but prophecy is set to chiasms. It can also show other structures.

The writers themselves were prophets, and inspired as they wrote, so that it may be
said that all their writing is set in the prophetic style -- in God's chosen style. Some of the versification comes from the writing up of the story, since the narrative explanation mixes freely with the direct speeches involved. The writer, or rather the original balladist, if it was orally transmitted, naturally has some latitude in telling the story, to set it in memorisable chunks. If you think of God as the balladist, then He has given us the stories in a suitable style. Some versification comes from the prophetic oracles themselves -- being inherently set to a pattern. Prophets are simply mouthing what God puts in their mouths. There is no latitude for 'interpretation' into other words, when the original wording is word-perfect to start with. Even the simplest speeches in the Bible, can turn out to be inspired, with prophetic mysteries embedded. That is why they are recorded. In scripture we see many examples of unnamed people saying things which turn out to be prophecy, such as when the women blessed new wives, or when the elders replied to the king, or when foreign kings spoke to Jews. We are reading a biassed selection of stories, of situations set up by God to accomplish His miraculous purposes.

Because the Hebrews were the race of prophets, and had these versified scriptures,
then it may be surmised that this style was naturalised amongst them, so that it became easy to think, speak, memorise, write, recite and prophesy, with such a running lilt, with chiasms and parallelisms.

It simply wouldn't be right to say that nobody would really talk like that -- because
the Hebrew culture was imbued in prophecy, and in its style. Having studied the chiasms, I now prefer to think and talk in chiasmatic order, rather than in Western logical or chronological order. The logic of it simply seeps in, and I have concluded that it is a superior method of presentation.

It does all that a well-structured argument and paragraph should do, and more. It previews, emphasises and reviews; It gives two examples, and clarifies itself by elaboration and parallel expression; It buries the details, and it headlines the points; It cues the beginning, and end; it is well-phrased, and is aurally pleasing, and its structure is recognisable. It is orderly, consistent and flexible. It fits itself in to the ongoing discourse. Chiasmatic style is an acquired taste, but its superiority is demonstrated in that it has translated well into other languages, times and cultures. It has lasted for millennia.

This has been supplied from the authors of the free commentary which you can download at http://sites.google.com/site/freecommentary.
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