Chiasm on the Morning and Evening Sacrifices in Numbers 28

 

Some chiasms are amazing, revealing relationships between people, assumptions that might have been hidden even from the author, and profound spiritual truths. Others seem a little more mundane.

This chiasm in Numbers 28:2-8 doesn't offer any deep revelations, but it's still interesting for practical reasons...at least if you're a priest at the Temple.

• v1-2 - Preamble
• v3 - Food offering to YHWH
• v4a - Morning lamb offering
• v4b - Twilight lamb offering
• v5 - Grain offering
• v6 - Burnt offering to YHWH ordained at Sinai
• v7 - Drink offering
• v8a - Twilight lamb offering
• v8b-c - Morning grain and drink offering
• v8d-e - Food offering to YHWH

This passage describes the daily morning and evening offerings, but it does so in a peculiar manner. It sandwiches a detailed description of the grain and drink offerings that accompany the evening sacrifice between two very brief mentions of the evening lamb and two very brief mentions of different aspects of the morning offerings. At first glance, it sounds like the evening sacrifices are supposed to be a bigger production than the morning ones, but the second mention of the morning offering indicates that the evening grain and wine are supposed to mirror the morning grain and wine. Just as the sunset mirrors the sunrise, the sunset offerings mirror the sunrise offerings.

The axis of the chiasm says that these offerings were established by God at Sinai. If you take it as straight narrative, it reads as if only the grain offering was instituted at Sinai, but it's position at the center of the chiastic structure indicates that the whole set of offerings--lambs, grain, and wine--both morning and evening--are intended.

Fortunately, we don't have to depend on a chiasm for that conclusion. The same thing is said explicitly in Exodus 29:38-42.

Now this is what you shall offer on the altar: two lambs a year old day by day regularly...
Exodus 29:38

Although I say that there doesn't appear to be anything especially profound in this chiasm, I should clarify that I don't perceive anything especially profound. However, I suspect that every verse, every literary structure in the Bible holds deeper truths than we will ever know in this lifetime.