GENESIS 24 AND 29: DOUBLETS?

  

                                History Repeats Itself (2010 collage) 

                              Mail Order Bride (2009 collage)

It is intriguing to contemplate the times that similar Old Testament events seem to be repeated, often within the same families. Thus, we have the well recognized cases of (in no particular order):

        Both Abraham and his son Isaac trying to pass off their wives as their sisters in order not to put themselves in harm's way of a ruler's wrath;

        Jacob resorting to trickery over and over again;

        the many times the older child is overlooked in favor of a younger one when it comes time to inheriting from their father;

        mere humans hoping to rival God in power;

        the repeated disobedience of the Israelites in the wilderness;

        two instances of attempted homosexual gang rape;

        the three irregular couplings in the lineage of Jesus involving, respectively, Tamar (with her father-in-law, Judah), Rahab (a foreign prostitute), and Bathsheba (through an adulterous relationship);

        God bringing children to barren women;

        repeated unsuccessful attempts by Satan to cast blame on or mislead God's chosen; and

        foreign leaders relying on the prophetic skills of Jewish prophets.

There are several ways to view this phenomenon of repeating patterns within the Bible, which first lead the reader to a sense of deja vu:

1. Critical scholars generally take the position that in many of these cases, labeled “doublets,” the final compilers of the oral traditions into our present books of the Bible were sometimes faced with two rival versions of the same story, and so they mistakenly assumed them to represent separate events that both needed to be included. The first possible example in the OT is the assumption of two different traditions regarding the creation of mankind in Genesis 1-2. And a noted example from the NT would be the story/stories of Jesus' miraculous feeding of the multitude on the mountain and/or the plain.

2. On the other hand, if one reviews the list of examples above (and it is by no means exhaustive), it is alternatively possible to explain the repetitions by invoking both the consistency of sin patterns within the human psyche and the consistency of the way God deals with those patterns. The latter helps to confirm the truth that all history is under the firm control of God.

3. Additionally, a literary perspective on Scripture is useful in pointing out that some of these examples of repetition happen to appear in symmetrically located positions within the text which seem to point to demarcation points within each book and help to locate central passages of interest. My many posts on “Introduction to Literary Structure” provide ample examples of this phenomenon. But even within this approach, a person can use it to strengthen either position 1 or 2 above, depending on one's basic theological stance.

Below are a few comments from scholars who have specifically commented on the similarities between the incidents in Genesis 24 and 29, pictured in the two collages above, both involving a patriarch finding a bride in incidents taking place at a public well:

A.P. Ross: “The significance of this event is greatly clarified by observing the parallel in Genesis 24:11-33...Just as Abraham's servant had met Rebekah at the well (it could have been the same well), so now Jacob met Rachel there. In all probability Laban would have remembered that earlier incident, especially how the Lord had led the servant to that spot. The parallel is more than coincidence. Yet this narrative does not emphasize divine leadership – it simply implies that providence was at work in Jacob's life....The parallel with Genesis 29 and the emphasis of this chapter in its immediate context strongly suggest that God brought him to Rachel – and to Laban.”

Wenham: “Jacob's alacrity in watering his uncle's flocks is matched by Laban's in greeting him. Of course Laban had been through all this before. Some years earlier his sister had met Isaac's servant at the well, who had showered Laban's family with wealth in order to persuade them to part with Rebekah. Was his haste this time prompted by the possibility of similar enrichment? If it was, he was quickly disillusioned, for Jacob was a runaway, not a rich emissary with ten camels...God's overruling providential guidance is as manifest here as in the very similar story in Gen 24, where Abraham's servant met Rebekah at the well.” Despite this, Wenham points to several key differences in detail regarding these two stories.

Hamilton: “In several ways Jacob's first encounter with Rachel and Laban parallels the encounter of Abraham's servant with Rebekah (24:10-33) and Moses' encounter with the daughters of Jethro (Exod. 2:15-21). (1) The hero (or his representative) goes to a distant land. (2) He stops at a well. (3) A girl (or girls) comes to the same well to draw water. (4) The hero draws water for them, or she for him. (5) The girl (or girls) returns home and reports the meeting to a brother for father. (6) The man is brought to the girl's house. (7) Subsequently a marriage takes place between the man at the well (or the man whom he represents) and the girl (or one of the girls) at the well. The two Genesis stories contain the further parallels that the strange land is in fact the land of the father (or his ancestors), and that the girl who comes to draw water is a cousin or the daughter or the daughter of a cousin of the groom-to-be.”

Garrett: “Literary motifs or conventions occur throughout literary history and do not imply literary dependence of one text on another...while Genesis 24 and 29, and Exodus 2 all contain the meeting of the wife-to-be at a well, Kenneth T. Aitken has concluded, after a detailed study of the structure of Genesis 24, that 'aside from the marriage itself, the basic structure of the plot in Genesis 24 has no parallel in either'. Wellhausen himself admits that the 'differences are great' among these narratives.'”

Dictionary of Biblical Imagery: “There is no need to attribute fiction to the recurrent presence of conventional motifs: the well was simply the place where social meetings occurred. The equivalent today would be a couple's meeting at college or church. The incipient symbolism of the romantic meeting at the well is easy to see: the arrival of the man from a distant land represents the 'otherness' of the relationship, the drawing of the water establishes a bond (the first rite of romance, in effect) and the gesture of hospitality in the parental home represents acceptance in a broader family context.”

Hawk: “Hebrew narrative is marked by its distinctive appreciation for symmetry, expressed most often through myriad forms of repetition...The Pentateuch...includes a number of repetitive story lines...A type-scene is an episode that follows a fixed sequence, as in the betrothal stories of Jacob, Isaac and Moses (Gen 24:1-66, 29:1-30; Ex 2:16-21), all of which are associated with wells...Study of the Pentateuch as literature...encompasses an array of methods, approaches and strategies. The questions that literary criticism raises have prodded biblical scholarship to grapple with the fundamental issue of how the Pentateuch is to be interpreted. Although there are those in both camps who insist that the methods of historical and literary analysis cannot be reconciled, interpretation now commonly utilizes both approaches.”

My own position is that history does indeed repeat itself, but by God's will rather than mere coincidence.