What is a type scene and what does it teach about God’s ways among his people?
This is Scripture for Students. I’m Steve Whitacre, president of Trinity College and a pastor at Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville. I want to help students build a daily habit for life-long Bible reading. Today is February 19, 2025 and this episode of Scripture for Students is called “Déjà Vu All Over Again”. Grab your Bible and let’s get started.
Our readings for today are Exodus 2, Luke 5, and Job 19.
Please open your Bibles to Exodus 2.
Yogi Berra might be the most underappreciated baseball player in the history of the game. He played 19 seasons in the Majors and won 10 World Series as a player, and 3 more as a manager. Yogi Berra should be a household name for his baseball career, but to most people, he is best known for his Yogi-isms—he said lots of funny or ironic things. I could spend this whole podcast talking about funny things Yogi Berra said, but one of his most famous was, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” I’m sure you know that the phrase déjà vu means, “To see something all over again,” so déjà vu all over again means, “I’m seeing something all over again, all over again.”
In today’s Scripture of Students, we’re going to experience déjà vu all over again. Please follow along with me as I read Exodus 2:11–22. See if you can spot the repeat of a scene from Genesis:
11 One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people.
12 He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
13 When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, “Why do you strike your companion?”
14 He answered, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid, and thought, “Surely the thing is known.”
15 When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian. And he sat down by a well.
16 Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came and drew water and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock.
17 The shepherds came and drove them away, but Moses stood up and saved them, and watered their flock.
18 When they came home to their father Reuel, he said, “How is it that you have come home so soon today?”
19 They said, “An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds and even drew water for us and watered the flock.”
20 He said to his daughters, “Then where is he? Why have you left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread.”
21 And Moses was content to dwell with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah.
22 She gave birth to a son, and he called his name Gershom, for he said, “I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.”
May the Lord bless the reading and the hearing and the keeping of his Word.
Did you figure it out? If not, sit tight for a minute, and I’ll come back to the déjà vu all over again. One quick thing first: I want to point out that this passage is a strange combination of a murder and a romance. Both are easy to miss, so let’s read carefully.
First, in verse 11, Moses comes across an Egyptian beating a Hebrew—the text calls the Hebrew, “One of his people.” Moses isn’t standing for that, so he killed the Egyptian and stashed his body in the sand. It’s possible that verse 12 indicates that Moses understood that what he did was wrong: it says, “he looked this way and that…” Many scholars agree that Moses wrote Exodus and it’s possible that he included this detail as a pointer to the sense of guilty conscience that he felt.
There are a number of reasons that Moses might have included this scene but I think that at least one of them could be to keep us from thinking too highly of Moses. What he did was wrong and so here, we get to know a little bit of his character—even if it is the less impressive side of his character. There’s only one perfect, sinless hero in the Bible, and he isn’t going to show up on the scene for about hundreds and hundreds more years.
You know what happens next: the following day, news of Moses’s murderous ways gets out and Moses has to flee for his life.
That moves us along from the murder to the romance, and that is the moment of the “déjà vu all over again.” Did you spot it? The scene I’m thinking of starts in verse 15 with a very simple action: it says that Moses sat down by a well. Think back to the book of Genesis. Do you remember any key moments when a fella went to a well for water and came home with a wife?
It happened at least twice that I can think of. In Genesis 24, Abraham sends his servant to find a wife for his son Isaac. The servant travels back to the land of Abraham and takes a break near a well. While he’s there, a woman comes to the well for water. Her name was Rebekah and she would soon become Isaac’s wife. Déjà vu.
In Genesis 29, Isaac’s son Jacob stops at a well and meets a woman named Rachel who would soon become his wife. Déjà vu all over again.
People who study literature and story-telling call this a “type scene.” Think of it as a template—because the basic details of the scene are repeated, it’s a way for the author to set the expectations of the reader for what is about to happen. Today, we use “type scenes” in all kinds of story-telling, too. For instance, suppose you’re watching a movie and the camera is looking down a dusty street with tumbleweed blowing around. A cowboy is facing you in the middle distance, his hat low over his eyes and his hands just above his gun belt. Suddenly, in the immediate foreground, another cowboy steps into the shot, facing away from you. A hawk cries high above while both gunslingers tap the handles of their guns. You know that you’re watching a Western and there’s about to be a shootout.
In the Bible, when a guy sits down by a well and a woman walks up to draw water, there’s a good chance a wedding is not far away. Sure enough, it only takes Moses two verses to start a family: in verse 21, he marries Zipporah and in verse 22, they have a son named Gershom.
You could say that type scenes are here for storytelling efficiency. But I think we’re supposed to see something more in this story than the setting for a budding romance. I think that when Moses sets this scene next to a well, he wants us to think of the stories in Genesis 24 and 29. Yes, Isaac and Jacob both found wives but the bigger point is that through those marriages, God was creating a way for a future generation of the descendants of Abraham—in other words, God was keeping his covenant promises to Abraham. This whole story is a very neat way for Moses to signal that we’re about to embark on another story of God providing for and protecting his people in order to keep his promises to make Abraham the father of a great multitude. How can this happen when God’s people are enslaved in Egypt? We’ll have to keep reading to find out! It may be déjà vu all over again, but it is fresh and new every time.
That’s all for today. If you enjoyed this episode please share it with a friend and follow us on Apple Podcasts.
This content is sponsored by Trinity College of Louisville. We shape young men and young women for Christ and for the church. Learn more at TrinityCollegeLou.com. Until next time, keep growing!