Ziba comes to David with some of Mephibosheth’s wealth and brought it to David on the pretext of pledging loyalty to David. Ziba tells David that Mephibosheth has purposefully refused to flee with David and stay behind to possibly gain the throne for himself. This chapter structured to highlight betrayal to show us that a particular individual, David was betrayed and that His descendant, the Messiah would be betrayed in a similar way.
Tag: chiastic structure
Daniel elaborates on the chiastic structure of 2nd Samuel 15–20 by showing a couple of simpler chiastic structures in Numbers 7, which was discussed during the Torah study.
The one in 2nd Samuel is the largest chiastic structure that Daniel has presented so far. However, the focus of this chiastic structure, as in most chiastic structures, is the Messiah. God places these chiastic structures in the Bible to reveal clues about the role of the Messiah or events that will occur in the Messiah’s life on earth.
This chapter is the culmination of the tragic story of Amnon and Tamar. It’s been three years since the death of Amnon at Absolom’s hands and David’s heart is still heavy. Joab convinces a wise woman to tell an elaborate story to tug at David’s heart to convince him to allow his son Absolom to return to Jerusalem.
Many passages in the Bible were written with a chiastic structure, which is like rhyming patterns in poetry but pairing similar information or concepts instead. That’s one reason why some passages seem to be highly repetitive. The point of chiastic structures is to point the reader to a key concept. Daniel explains that the Book of Esther is one large chiastic structure, focusing on a messianic prophecy in the middle.
Chiastic structures for the Messiah in the Prophets are not pictures of the Messiah, but rather “Shadows” of the Messiah. The TaNaK (Torah, Prophets and Writings) frequently uses thematic equivalents to indicate who and what the Messiah will be. The chiastic structure we will be looking at today focuses on love and adoption. There are multiple chiastic structures in this chapter alone.
Once David had some security in his kingship, he seeks out Jonathan’s kin and discovers that Jonathan’s crippled son Mephibosheth is still alive (and has a son of his own) and has survived the political assassinations and turmoil that were part of the aftermath of Saul’s death.
Chiastic literary structures you find in the TaNaK (Torah, Prophets and Writings) and the Apostolic Scriptures give us prophetic clues in texts that don’t seem to be prophetic at all.