Bethuel - Hebrew Bible

Hebrew Bible

The man Bethuel appears nine times in nine verses in the Hebrew Bible, all in Genesis. Adherents of the documentary hypothesis often attribute most of these verses to the Jahwist source, and the remainder to the priestly source.

Bethuel lived in Padan-aram, and is described as "Aramaean", although his Chaldean background is also indicated, as a descendant of Terah. Bethuel's uncle Abraham sent his senior servant to Padan-aram to find a wife for his son Isaac. By the well outside the city of Nahor, in Aram-naharaim, the servant met Bethuel’s daughter Rebekah. The servant told Rebekah’s household his good fortune in meeting Bethuel’s daughter, Abraham’s relative. Laban and Bethuel answered, “The matter was decreed by the LORD; we cannot speak to you bad or good. Here is Rebekah before you; take her and go, and let her be a wife to your master’s son, as the LORD has spoken.”

After meeting Abraham’s servant, Rebekah “ran and told all this to her mother’s household”, that Rebekah’s “brother and her mother said, ‘Let the maiden remain with us some ten days’”, and that “they sent off their sister Rebekah and her nurse along with Abraham’s servant and his men. And they blessed Rebekah and said to her, ‘O sister! May you grow into thousands of myriads.” Some scholars thus hypothesize that mention of Bethuel in Gen. 24:50 was a late addition to the preexisting story. Other scholars argue that these texts indicate that Bethuel was somehow incapacitated. Other scholars attribute the emphasis on the mother's role to a matralineal family structure.

A generation later, Isaac sent Jacob back to Padan-aram to take a wife from among Bethuel’s granddaughters, rather than from among the Canaanites.