Three examples of simple chiasmus are found in Isaiah 5:20:
A Woe unto them that call evil
B good,
B and good
A evil;
A that put darkness
B for light,
B and light
A for darkness;
A that put bitter
B for sweet,
B and sweet
A for bitter!
Here the terms evil and good are
presented once and then again in reverse order, a simple chiastic inversion.
The verse features two other simple chiasms based on darkness/light and bitter/sweet.
Another simple example is Isaiah
6:10:
A Make the heart of
this people fat,
B and make
their ears heavy,
C
and shut their eyes;
C
lest they see with their eyes,
B and hear with
their ears,
A and understand with their heart.
The Book of Mormon contains more
than three hundred instances of chiasmus,[4] each
one unique, impactful, and inspiring.[5] This
is a remarkable number. Second Nephi 9:20 is a beautifully simple chiasm about
God’s omniscience:
A For he knoweth
B all
things,
B and there
is not anything
A save he knows it.
In only a few lines, Alma 34:10
features a chiasm that presents essential truth about Jesus’s infinite and
eternal sacrifice:
A there should be a great
and last sacrifice;
B yea, not
a sacrifice of man,
C
neither of beast,
C
neither of any manner of fowl;
B for it shall
not be a human sacrifice;
A but it must be an infinite
and eternal sacrifice.
Mosiah 3:18–19 gives us a chiasm
focusing on Jesus Christ and his atoning blood:
A they humble themselves
B and become as
little children,
C
and believe that salvation was, and is, and is to come, in and through the
atoning
blood of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent.
D
For the natural man
E
is an enemy to God,
F
and has been from the fall of Adam,
F
and will be, forever and ever,
E
unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit,
D
and putteth off the natural man
C
and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord,
B and becometh
as a child,
A submissive, meek, humble .
. .
Mosiah 2:5–6 provides another
example of a chiastic passage:
A And it came to pass that when
they came up to the temple,
B they pitched
their tents round about,
C
every man according to his family,
D
consisting of his wife, and his sons, and his daughters,
D
and their sons, and their daughters, from the eldest
down to the youngest,
C
every family being separate one from another.
B And they pitched
their tents
A round about the temple.
Alma 36 Chiasmus
No one was even aware of chiasmus being in the Book of Mormon until John W. Welch first identified chiasmus in the Book of Mormon in 1967 while on his mission in Germany after attending a lecture about chiasmus being in the Bible.
It is bewildering that there are 300 examples of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith didn't even know about chiasmus. The mathematical probability of chiasmus occurring 16 levels deep, centering on Jesus Christ, then reversing in perfect order as found Alma 36 is absolutely impossible!
