The Symbolism in the Structure of Genesis

Genesis is organized into ten sections, all of which begin with the phrase, “These are the generations of…” followed by a person’s name. The biblical authors take as much care with organizing their books as they do with telling the stories contained within them.

Meaning is packed into the very structure of the text. Here I want to look at what the structure of Genesis reveals about its main character, and the change that takes place when God calls Abraham.

Alternating Narrative and Genealogy

When looking at the organization of Genesis into ten sections, one crucial detail stands out: not all ten sections are narrative stories. Moses alternates genres. He alternates back and forth between stories and genealogies.

Why would Moses use genealogies so heavily? Unfortunately, many people assume genealogies are merely boring lists of names and numbers. That is not what genealogies are—at least not in the Bible. In Scripture, genealogies are just as artistic a piece of craft as the narrative stories.

Consider the literary challenge Moses faced. Imagine you have the task of writing a work that must cover vast expanses of time—hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years—in a relatively short number of words. What literary tools are available to you?

One tool is simple summary, like the opening crawl of Star Wars, where you compress many years into a few sentences. The biblical authors do use summary, but another vital technique they employ is genealogy.

Genealogy is a wonderful tool for pacing. It gives Genesis a balanced cadence: moving quickly across long stretches of time, and then slowing down in the narrative sections to focus closely on an individual life.

Covering vast stretches of time carries two risks:

1. You can be too broad and big-picture, talking only about sweeping nations, which fails to connect with people on an existential level in their real, individual lives.
2. You can focus entirely on individual people and fail to cover the historical span required.

Switching between genealogies and narratives allows Moses to maintain a balanced cadence throughout the work. Furthermore, genealogies do not simply list names and ages; they characterize people and describe the moral nature of entire family lines.

A Broken Pattern Points to Abraham

The primary reason Moses uses genealogies goes beyond pacing. When you look at the outline of Genesis, you notice an almost perfect structural pattern.

Moses knows that readers love symmetrical patterns. So why does he disrupt this pattern at one specific point in the Abraham story?

He disrupts our expectations because he wants to focus our attention. In art and music, this is the classic technique of theme and variation. Why would Moses want to focus our attention so sharply on Abraham? What fundamentally changes there?

It points us back to the main character of Genesis. The main character of Genesis is not Abraham. The main character is the one introduced in the very first sentence of the book: “In the beginning, God…”

To see why our attention is being focused on Abraham, we must look at what God has done up to this point in the narrative.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, darkness was over the face of the deep, and God said, “Let there be light.” He creates the cosmos during the creation week, makes man and woman, and gives them a royal mandate: be fruitful and multiply, subdue the earth, and rule over it—verbs later reserved for kings.

He places them in the garden and tells them they may eat of any tree except one. But they see that the forbidden tree is good, and they take it. God comes to judge them, and part of the punishment is exile from the garden. Notice the direction: the narrator specifies that they are driven east. That is sin number one.

Then comes sin number two: Cain and Abel. Cain murders Abel, God arrives in judgment, and once again the narrator specifies the direction of exile: Cain goes east, further away from Eden, further from the presence of God.

Then comes sin number three: the strange episode where the sons of God see that the daughters of men are good and take them—a deliberate verbal echo of the first sin in the garden. After this third sin, global judgment arrives in the flood. The flood is an act of de-creation: the chaotic waters that covered the earth in the beginning return, collapsing the world back into its disordered state.

This establishes a clear cyclical pattern: three sins, exile to the east, and climactic judgment.

What happens after the flood? The cycle begins anew. First is the sin of Ham (sin number one). Then comes the Tower of Babel (sin number two). Once again, the narrator specifies direction: the builders migrate from the east and construct a counterfeit Eden. God comes down, confuses their language, and disperses them.

The Reversal of the Curse

At this point in the established pattern, the reader expects a third sin followed by catastrophic judgment. But God disrupts the pattern. He refuses to allow his world and humanity to simply spiral into destruction.

Instead of waiting for a third sin and bringing judgment, God steps in and calls Abraham. He calls Abraham to journey west—back toward the garden, back toward Eden.

God promises Abraham extraordinary things: “I will make you fruitful and multiply you.” That was the command God originally gave to Adam, but now God says, I will accomplish that in you. Later, God promises that kings will come from Abraham—fulfilling the kingly ruling work originally assigned to humanity.

The great change that takes place with Abraham is that God assumes an extraordinarily active role. He says, in effect: “I am going to do the very things that humanity could not do, and I will do them in you and through you.”

Moses signals this profound theological shift by breaking the literary pattern of his book. The literary form directly mirrors the theological content. And that is why the Bible is art.

Watch the original episode.