Hidden Parallels

About a year ago I came across an unusual passage in the Old Testament that seemed to foreshadow Jesus' resurrection. It occurs in Genesis 29:1-10, where Jacob is watering some sheep as Rachel approaches him. The key verse is found in Genesis 29:3 (NKJV):

"Now all the flocks would be gathered there; and they would roll the stone from the well’s mouth, water the sheep, and put the stone back in its place on the well’s mouth."

I found interesting how this parallels the Resurrection account found in Matthew 28:1-2 (NKJV):

"Now after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat on it."

In both situations, a large stone covers an object (in the first case a well, in the second a tomb), both provide water (the well provides water for the sheep, Jesus provides living water), and in both situations the stone was "rolled away" to provide access to the water. I've tried to find out the name of this particular well, and if in fact it is Jacob's Well, but to no avail. The larger point is that I've seen many passages like these over the years (other than the obvious ones that always get written up in books) but wonder if there are more hiding in plain sight in the text.

Likewise, there's an eerie passage in Joshua 10:16-27 about the fate of five Amorite kings. It, too, deals with caves, stones, and people being "buried" in the caves. In this case, however, the kings are first trapped inside a cave, then brought before Joshua, only to be hung on trees, and returned dead back to the cave. For example, verse 27 (NKJV) reads:

"So it was at the time of the going down of the sun that Joshua commanded, and they took them down from the trees, cast them into the cave where they had been hidden, and laid large stones against the cave’s mouth, which remain until this very day."

I don't know how common of a practice this was during those times, but again there are some odd parallels to the Resurrection account, but in a contrasting way. In the future, I'll discuss some more of these parallels and cover more about caves in the Bible.

How often do you find connections between the Old and the New Testament?