Chiasm (Gen 6:7)

Adam’s Aftermath

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⁷ because I have changed my attitude about having made them.

כִּ֥י נִחַ֖מְתִּי כִּ֥י עֲשִׂיתִֽם׃

There’s no surprise here. We were told at the beginning of v. 6 that YHWH had changed his attitude; now, as a kind of inclusio, v. 7 closes with that same information in his own voice. If you missed my discussion of “changing one’s attitude” as a translation of נחם, you can find it here.

A more intricate form of inclusio is chiasm. I’ve discussed it here, here, and (on my other “Bible Guy” blog) here; in the simplest possible terms, it means that a later text follows the outline of an earlier text in reverse order. That can be schematically represented this way: χ (the Greek letter chi; hence the name). I’m bringing it up now not to claim that v. 6b and v. 7a match each other — I don’t believe they do, and if they did calling these verses chiastic would be trivial.

Instead, I want to share with you “Exhibit 1” from an article by Bernard M. Levinson, an exhibit labeled “The Chiastic Relationship between the Creation Account (Genesis 1) and the Flood Narrative (Genesis 6).”