Bible Synapse
Was Laban the son of Bethuel or of Nahor?
Hard question · Genealogies · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
Rebekah tells Abraham’s servant: “I am the daughter of Bethuel the son of Milcah, which she bare unto Nahor.”
And she said unto him, I am the daughter of Bethuel the son of Milcah, which she bare unto Nahor.
“And Rebekah had a brother, and his name was Laban”, who runs out to meet the servant at the well.
And Rebekah had a brother, and his name was Laban: and Laban ran out unto the man, unto the well.
Isaac sends Jacob to Padan-aram, “unto Laban, son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah”.
And Isaac sent away Jacob: and he went to Padan–aram unto Laban, son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob’s and Esau’s mother.
At the well near Haran Jacob asks the shepherds, “Know ye Laban the son of Nahor?”
And he said unto them, Know ye Laban the son of Nahor? And they said, We know him.
The objection
Genesis 28:5 calls Laban “son of Bethuel the Syrian”. A chapter later Jacob asks the shepherds whether they know “Laban the son of Nahor” (29:5). Critics ask which man was Laban’s father.
The answer
Bethuel was Laban’s father and Nahor his grandfather, and Genesis sets out the family plainly. Nahor, Abraham’s brother, had a son Bethuel by his wife Milcah, “and Bethuel begat Rebekah” (22:20–23). Rebekah calls herself “the daughter of Bethuel the son of Milcah, which she bare unto Nahor” (24:24), and her brother was Laban (24:29). In Hebrew, ben, ‘son’, is used of a grandson or any later descendant as well as of a son, so ‘Laban the son of Nahor’ means Laban of Nahor’s family. The BSB translates Genesis 29:5 that way: “Laban the grandson of Nahor”.
Genesis uses the same freedom for Rebekah herself. Abraham’s servant thanks God for leading him “to take my master’s brother’s daughter unto his son” (24:48), though she was the granddaughter of Abraham’s brother. It was natural for Jacob, speaking to strangers, to name the family by its head, for Nahor was the founder of the house, and Haran is called “the city of Nahor” (24:10). John Gill adds that Bethuel may by then have died, leaving Laban as head of the household; in Genesis 24 it is Laban, not his father, who does most of the talking.
From the classic commentators
He was the son of Bethuel, and grandson of Nahor; grandsons being called the sons of their grandfather; and Nahor might be more known than Bethuel, Haran being Nahor's cityJohn Gill, Exposition of the Bible, on Genesis 29:5 (1746–1763)