There's a part of me that's tempted to use a whole bunch of words to make what we're going to cover today seem like more

important or more profound but the reality is that what we're going to look at

today which is the structure of the beatitudes the framework on which they're

built is really not that complicated and once you learn

to identify this little rhyming pattern that is called chiasm or chiastic structure You really see it all over the place in the Bible.

It's not like I think even people had to think really hard to pull this off like you or I might have to

in a writing class. I think it's just the way the Hebrew brain kind of worked at this

point and I wouldn't know well enough to say whether that's even still the case, but it is, it's so automatic in the Old Testament and in the more Hebrew audience oriented

writing of the New Testament that you get this, this rising up the mountain, hitting the

middle point of the thought and then coming back down the other

side of the thought's kind of structure where each elevation on opposite sides of the peak

correspond. Sounds so complicated, I need to think of a better way to say it, but it's really so very, very simple. And somebody really smartly pointed out in the subreddit, I'm sorry, I should have got your username so you would get credit for this but it was smart

they were saying well isn't this just the old A B B A school yard rhyme structure for poetry

or pop music and the answer is yes it is that except we're not

rhyming sounds with the kiastic structure we're rhyming ideas and one of the really important things about this structure

is that sometimes the ideas rhyme perfectly. They're straight up symmetrical. But the reason

that this chiastic thought is so thought-provoking and probably

stood the test of time is that they don't always perfectly rhyme. Sometimes they just correspond, and the ideas actually compliment each other so it's more of a complex

rhyme like you know you get the simple poetry where it's like you know Matt likes to bat his cat's name is Pat and it's all right through the front door

but I can't think of any more complex poetry but this sometimes poetry is way more elaborate than that.

My friend Destin and I, we just did on our other podcast,

The midnight ride of Paul Revere.

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