Read 1 Samuel 29 here (text coming …) or at Bible Gateway.
The Hebrew paragraphs:
29:1-3 {p} Achish’s 1st testimony of David’s faultlessness
29:4-5 {s} The lords of the Philistines reject David since he is the hero of Israel
29:6-7 {s} Achish’s 2nd testimony of David’s faultlessness, but he must depart
29:8-11 {s} David objects, and Achish’s 3rd testimony of David’s faultlessness, but but he must depart
1 Samuel 29:1-11 Reverse Parallelism:
The elegance of God’s structuring of His Word always blows my mind! In this structure, there is no central axis, but the central axis’ of the C pairs themselves pair: no fault in him (1C)/ what is my fault (2C). The structure adds nothing to the narrative, so why does God do this?
It testifies to the divine origin of the text, as no human mind can come up with the elegance of these structures that are being uncovered. Well, we might say that a human mind could come up with a few of them; but the structures for every single paragraph, chapter, strong theme, Torah portion, and book of the Bible, with dozens of different authors over the course of 4000 years? And so many of them overlapping, without once disturbing the flow of the narrative?
As well, it proves that the original texts we have in our Bibles are not corrupted, as so many “experts” say they have been. Sometimes the structures depend on repeats of specific words or phrases, as in the above example with Jezreel. If the text had been corrupted, the structures would fall apart. And God has reserved for this generation, the generation of His return, the revealing of these structures. None of this comes from other scholarship, ancient or modern, but from the Holy Spirit Himself, communicating His message with clarity and understanding.
That David was faultless in His integrity also prophesies of Messiah, for so Pilate, another Gentile “king,” testified of Yeshua (John 19).
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