THE LITERARY STRUCTURE
OF THE BOOK OF EXODUS 1-18:
six pericopes and their chiastic lexical relation: introduction.

It is found as a result of the theocentric method research that in the level of the thematic content of pericopes, the literary structure of Exo 1-18 is a concentric one; thus, it has a feature typical for Hebrew literary compositions.

It turns out that such a concentric structure is hidden deeper – in the lexical level, namely:

if in each of the six pericopes separately, one examines the number of Hebrew words occurring in one of the two groups chosen in the comprehensive research:

1. forms of future tenses: either in the imperfect or in the perfect with waw consecutive, or in the imperative,
2. forms of past tenses: either in the perfect or in the imperfect with waw consecutive,

the following results are obtained [1]:

These relations can also be presented in the bar graph form – it is shown in the next step of this presentation.