In | Workbook: Moses’ Chiastic Speech

Grab your Workbook Journal!

[Record your answers in the workbook provided at the beginning of this course.]

Chiasms play an important role in biblical literature, and Numbers 11 provides us with a prime example of this literary technique. Moses is fed up with the people’s complaining and makes an impassioned speech to God. 

We’re providing this passage in NASB translation, as the full impact of the chiasm is more evident in this translation than in the NIV. 

So Moses said to the Lord, “Why have You been so hard on Your servant? And why have I not found favor in Your sight, that You have laid the burden of all this people on me? Was it I who conceived all this people? Was it I who brought them forth, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom as a nurse carries a nursing infant, to the land which You swore to their fathers’? Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they weep before me, saying, ‘Give us meat that we may eat!’ I alone am not able to carry all this people, because it is too burdensome for me. So if You are going to deal thus with me, please kill me at once, if I have found favor in Your sight, and do not let me see my wretchedness.” Numbers 11:11-15 (NASB)

1. Outline the chiasm in Numbers 11:11-15 below using an A, B, C, C’, B’, A’ pattern.

Compare your chiasm in Numbers 11 with this one below: 

A          Why have I not found favor in Your sight?

   B          You should say to me, “Carry them in your bosom”

      C          Where am I to get meat to give to all this people?

      C’         “Give us meat that we may eat!”

   B’         I alone am not able to carry all this people. 

A’         Kill me at once, if I have found favor in Your sight.

Now that you’ve had a chance to outline a chiasm, answer the questions below:

2. Why do you think this literary structure was used in this passage?

3. How might this passage be a foreshadowing of things to come in Numbers 11–20?