What is the «betrothal at the well» type-scene in the Bible?

The Bible tells the same scene four times — a man at a foreign well, daughters arriving with water-jars, and a bride is found.

Genesis 24 is the first time the canon stages it. Abraham's servant, sent to find a wife for Isaac, makes his camels kneel «outside the city, by the well» at evening, «the time the women come out to draw» (Genesis 24:11). Rebekah arrives. He asks her for water. She volunteers to water all ten of his camels (about 250 gallons of labor). She runs home to her mother's house with the news (Genesis 24:28).

That sequence becomes a template. Five chapters later, Jacob runs from Esau and ends up at a well in Paddan-aram:

«He looked, and behold, there was a well in the field … Rachel came with her father's sheep, for she was a shepherdess. Then Jacob went near and rolled the stone from the mouth of the well, and watered the flock of Laban his mother's brother … and Rachel ran and told her father.» — Genesis 29:2, 9–10, 12

Same well, same drawing-water verb (שָׁקָה, shaqah, H8248, «to give to drink»), same daughter, same run-home. The vocabulary overlap is dense — Pattern-compare counts thirty shared Hebrew word-roots between Genesis 24:10–28 and Genesis 29:1–14.

Then Moses, fleeing Pharaoh, sits down at a well in Midian:

«Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters; and they came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father's flock … And Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flock.» — Exodus 2:16–17

Same well, same verb shaqah three times in four verses, same daughters drawing water. Moses ends up married to Zipporah, one of the seven (Exodus 2:21). The template holds.

So when the Fourth Gospel stages Jesus at a well in Samaria, the trained reader knows what kind of scene this is supposed to be. John 4:6 names it explicitly:

«And there was Jacob's well there. Jesus, then, being wearied from his journey, sat by the well …» — John 4:6

A man at a foreign well, sitting just as Moses sat (Exodus 2:15 LXX uses the same verb). A woman approaches with her water-jar. He asks her for a drink. The Greek words John reaches for are not random — they are the LXX vocabulary of Genesis 24. The Greek word for «water-jar» (ὑδρία, hudria, G5201) is the exact word the Septuagint uses for Rebekah's jar nine times in Genesis 24. The verb «to draw water» (ἀντλέω, antleō, G501) is the verb the Septuagint uses at Genesis 24:13, 20 and Exodus 2:16–19. Both Greek words appear in the New Testament only in John, and only at his two water scenes — Cana (John 2) and the Samaritan well (John 4).

Then John 4:28 makes the inversion:

«So the woman left her water-jar, and went into the city, and said to the people, ‹Come, see a man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?›» — John 4:28–29

Every other bride in the type-scene carries her jar home. The Samaritan woman leaves hers at the well. The type-scene is fulfilled by being broken. Rebekah ran to her mother's house with the news of a marriage; the Samaritan woman runs to a city with the news of the bridegroom.

John the Baptist has already named Jesus the bridegroom three chapters earlier («the one who has the bride is the bridegroom», John 3:29). When John 4 stages Jesus at a well, with a woman, with a water-jar she abandons, the LXX vocabulary tells the Greek-reading church exactly what scene they are watching.

The full study traces all four wells, the dense Hebrew verb-clusters in Genesis 24, and the LXX→John bridge that carries the bride-quest vocabulary from Aram-naharaim to Sychar.