In Defense of Reading the Repetitive Parts of the Bible
If not same story, why story sound same over and over
Welcome to another installment of the “In Defense of…” series—where I’m reflecting on some of the more challenging (to me) parts of the Bible as I read through it over the course of 2025. Check out this page for a current list of all posts as well as other information and resources about this project.
It’s been a long week. In the world, in my life, on this blog (mostly because of what I wrote last week).
It’s also been a long month in my devotions, an uphill plod through Genesis and Job as I continue wandering through the Bible in a year.
It could be worse. It could still be February 2, for example, Groundhog Day. We could all be stuck in an endless time loop feeding us through the same meaningless day over and over again. Thankfully we aren’t—or are we? 😱
Which brings me to the topic of this post: in defense of reading the repetitive parts of the Bible.
One of the more exasperating parts about reading the Bible in any systematic way—that is, not just reading pericopes or cherry-picked verses from a devotional—is the level of redundancy.
Here are some examples of what I mean…
Four Kinds of Repetition One Encounters in the Bible
Verbal Repetition: Anytime someone in the Bible is given a long-winded, overly detailed message, dream, or set of instructions to convey to someone else, you can almost guarantee they will repeat it word for word to the next person. Take Joseph and his brothers for example. When Joseph—disguised as an Egyptian official—orders two of his brothers to bring Benjamin back to Egypt, they relay his speech to their father almost verbatim. Never mind that we, as readers, already heard it the first time. This pattern plays out multiple times as the brothers shuttle back and forth between Canaan and Egypt (Genesis 42-45), sometimes even reiterating earlier reiterations. Would it have killed the biblical compilers to throw in a paraphrase or summary now and then?
This kind of repetition reminds us that many of these stories were transmitted orally before they were written down. Indeed, I tend to find these instances a little less exasperating when listening to audio versions of the Bible rather than reading it on page, because I pick up on details I may have missed the first time around.
Detail Repetition (across books and genres): As when, for example, the same genealogies are shared both in Genesis and Chronicles (cp. Genesis 9-10 and 1 Chronicles 1). Fun.
Type-Scene Repetition: A type-scene is a storytelling pattern—one audiences recognize instinctively—used to set up expectations, then tweak or subvert them to convey important information. Think of classic jokes that start with lines like “Why did the chicken cross the road?” or “A guy walks into a bar…” The scene and setup is always the same, but the details that follow change, playing with what we anticipate and making it obvious what the punchline is.
In literature, typescenes work similarly. Recurring within books as well as across genres and even cultures, these scenes clue readers into important character traits and plot developments based on how they align with—or disrupt—the usual formula. While type-scenes of the Bible may have been instinctively recognizable to ancient audiences, we in the twenty-first century need a bit of literary excavation to grasp the nuances, so they sometimes seem repetitive to us (just as our constantly telling stories about a chicken crossing the road would have seem repetitive to them).
As an example… One prominent type-scene in ancient Mesopotamian culture, including the Bible, is the "meeting at a well" trope—where a man encounters a woman who often becomes his wife. Each time this scene appears in Scripture, it unfolds with distinct twists that would have stood out to ancient audiences, signaling deeper meaning about the characters involved. These variations weren’t just stylistic choices; they carried significant narrative weight.» (For more on how folklore shapes biblical storytelling, check out Robert Alter’s The Art of Biblical Narrative and Chapter 7 of Amy-Jill Levine’s The Old Testament.)
Rhetorical and poetic repetition: This is when repetitive stylistic formulas are used to signal emphasis, cadence, or poetic form.
Think of the King James language used in the biblical genealogies: “Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren…” (Mt 1:2).
Sometimes repetition happens in service of poetic forms, as in Psalm 136 (135 LXX), where every other line is the same “His love endures forever” (26 times total).
In this way, repetition gives texts a rhythmic, almost liturgical cadence that—even in translation, thousands of years later—is pleasing to the ear. Ancient hearers and listeners, who were more sensitive to the aural feel of a text, would have been attuned to these kinds of rhetorical formulas, and repetition would have been an important tool to aid memory and attention to detail.
The Thorn in My Side: Existential Repetition
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecc 1:9)
Maybe the most exhausting kind of repetition in the Bible is the kind that serves little literary or rhetorical purpose but is more existential.
The same old recycled sins—greed, forgetfulness, hatred, jealousy, despair. The same old patterns. The same old cycles of death and destruction, injustice and idolatry spinning through the generations like a broken record.
Israel grumbling their way in circles through the desert. The recurring cries of the prophets to repent, turn away from evil, remember God, etc. God’s people swinging back and forth like a Hegelian dialectic—from faithfulness to faithlessness to some uneasy synthesis of the two that never holds for long before becoming the next starting point in the same old cycle.
“History does not repeat itself,” Mark Twain is claimed to have said, “but it very often rhymes.”
Yet this seems too elegant, as though the resurging tides of history were some well-mannered sonnet rather than the seething, anarchic free-verse they are.
It’s easy to want to skip over the parts of the Bible that feel redundant. Been there, read that. It’s easy to want to conflate it all into a tidier (shorter) narrative arc that lets us gloss over the backward slides.
But the benefits of sitting with Scripture’s seemingly endless redundancies go beyond the off-plot details we may otherwise miss.
When I read the repetitive parts of the Bible, I am forced to remember the more imprisoning patterns of my own life, my own sins, the repetitions of broken humanity writ micro in my own words, patterns, thoughts, actions. I am forced to remember that so much of what is broken in our lives, our homes, our societies is not new but very, very old. I am forced to face the stale discouragement of that fact.
But I am also invited to remember the repetition of grace, mercy, renewal. The endless coming and going of Sabbath throughout all of time and creation, the cycles of Jubilee days and years that were baked into the legal rhythm of Israel. I remember the seasonality of death and resurrection. And through this lens, I can hear in the prophets’ unheeded calls for repentance, also their unwavering recollections of God’s love, His promise to renew the Earth, to bring healing and justice to the oppressed.
When I read the repetitive parts of the Bible, I am invited into the sacred mystery of second, third, seventeenth chances. I am invited into a journey toward God that is neither perfectly linear nor hopelessly cyclical, but somewhere in between—an endless stumbling towards the light, forward and backwards and forwards again, with much-needed reminders along the way.
I am reminded that as repetitive as the sins of man (and myself) are, the mercy of God is even more so, and it is to this constant unfurling of grace I can join myself moment by moment. Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.
What other kinds of repetition do you notice in the Bible? How do repetitive details and themes help or hinder you in your approach to Scriptures?
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One of the most repetitive parts of the Bible is Numbers 7, an extensive description of the offerings brought by the leaders of the twelve tribes. On the first day, the leader of Judah brings the offering:
"He who offered his offering the first day was Nahshon the son of Amminadab, of the tribe of Judah. And his offering was one silver plate whose weight was 130 shekels, one silver basin of 70 shekels, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, both of them full of fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering; one golden dish of 10 shekels, full of incense; one bull from the herd, one ram, one male lamb a year old, for a burnt offering; one male goat for a sin offering; and for the sacrifice of peace offerings, two oxen, five rams, five male goats, and five male lambs a year old. This was the offering of Nahshon the son of Amminadab." (7:12–17)
The next day is the tribe of Issachar:
"On the second day Nethanel the son of Zuar, the chief of Issachar, made an offering. He offered for his offering one silver plate whose weight was 130 shekels, one silver basin of 70 shekels, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, both of them full of fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering; one golden dish of 10 shekels, full of incense; one bull from the herd, one ram, one male lamb a year old, for a burnt offering; one male goat for a sin offering; and for the sacrifice of peace offerings, two oxen, five rams, five male goats, and five male lambs a year old. This was the offering of Nethanel the son of Zuar." (7:18–23)
As you can see, the details of the offering are exactly the same as the previous day's, but are nevertheless spelled out again. And so it continues each day, until all 12 tribes have made their offerings. Finally, we get a summation:
"This was the dedication offering for the altar on the day when it was anointed, from the chiefs of Israel: twelve silver plates, twelve silver basins, twelve golden dishes, each silver plate weighing 130 shekels and each basin 70, all the silver of the vessels 2,400 shekels according to the shekel of the sanctuary, the twelve golden dishes, full of incense, weighing 10 shekels apiece according to the shekel of the sanctuary, all the gold of the dishes being 120 shekels; all the cattle for the burnt offering twelve bulls, twelve rams, twelve male lambs a year old, with their grain offering; and twelve male goats for a sin offering; and all the cattle for the sacrifice of peace offerings twenty-four bulls, the rams sixty, the male goats sixty, the male lambs a year old sixty. This was the dedication offering for the altar after it was anointed." (7:84–88)
The repeated details make this a difficult chapter to get through. So why bother spelling them out each time for all 12 days of 12 tribes? My reading is that by including the details each time the text is emphasizing the equality of the tribes, and the equality of their offerings: they are all equally important. If the text had just included the details for Judah and then said that the others brought the same offerings on their appointed days, it would be a much faster—and less frustrating—reading experience. But that emphasis on the equality of the offerings would be lost, and it would feel as if Judah's was the most important. One can imagine members of different tribes looking forward to hearing the details of "their" offering on the appointed day.
In passages like this, it's hard not to start skimming or reading ahead. But I try to remind myself that if the text bothers to include such repetitions—at not only the cost of time but at great expense for the physical scrolls—there are reasons for it, and I try to look for those reasons. And just slow down and continue reading properly, knowing that if you were hearing the ancient scroll being read aloud, there was no way of skipping ahead!
It's interesting to think that the story of Jesus meeting the woman at the well (Photini) is a subversion of the usual meeting at the well theme.