Functions that churn out lambdas - when?

I just wrote my own "repeated" implementation (SICP lecture 3x), and I thought the same could have been done with something of the format (repeated procedure item times), instead of dealing with another layer of abstraction by churning out a procedure that does the actual iteration ((repeated procedure times) item). At this point, choosing between both forms seems like an arbitrary flip of the coin - can anyone on /prog/ enlighten me?

[/code]
(defun repeated (f n)
  (lambda (item)
    (loop repeat n do (funcall f item))))
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