Bethuel lived in Paddan Aram, identified as the area of Harran in Upper Mesopotamia.[11] He was a descendant of Terah. Bethuel's uncle Abraham sent his senior servant to Paddan Aram to find a wife for his son Isaac. By the well outside of Nahor in Aram-Naharaim, the servant met Bethuel's daughter Rebecca. The servant told Rebecca's household his good fortune in meeting Bethuel's daughter, Abraham's relative. Laban and Bethuel answer, "'The matter was decreed by יהוה; 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 יהוה has spoken.'"[12]
After meeting Abraham's servant, Rebecca “ran and told all this to her mother’s household”, that Rebecca's “brother and her mother said, "'Let the maiden remain with us some ten days; then you may go'. ... So they sent off their sister Rebekah and her nurse along with Abraham’s servant and his entourage." Some scholars[who?] thus hypothesize that mention of Bethuel in Gen. 24:50 was a late addition to the preexisting story. Other scholars[who?] argue that these texts indicate that Bethuel was somehow incapacitated. Other scholars attribute the emphasis on the mother's role to a matrilineal family structure. Despite the importance of Rebekah's mother in the narrative of this bible passage, her name is not mentioned.
A generation later, Isaac and Rebecca sent their son Jacob back to Paddan Aram to take a wife from among Laban's daughters, Bethuel's granddaughters, rather than from among the Canaanites.
Rabbinic interpretation
In the Talmud, Rabbi Isaac called Bethuel a wicked man.[13] The midrash identified Bethuel as a king.[14]
The Book of Jasher, a collection of sayings of the sages from the Amoraim period, lists the children of Bethuel as Sahar, Laban, and their sister Rebecca.[citation needed]
In the Talmud, Abba Arikha in the name of Reuben ben Strobilus cited Laban's and Bethuel's response to Abraham's servant as a proof text for the proposition that God destines a woman and a man for each other in marriage in Moed.[15]
Joshua ben Nehemiah, in the name of Hanina bar Isaac, said that the decree regarding Rebecca that Laban and Bethuel acknowledged came from Mount Moriah in Genesis Rabbah 60:10.
Noting that Genesis 24:55 reports that the next day, Rebekah's “brother and her mother said, ‘Let the maiden remain with us some ten days’” (Gen. 24:55), the Rabbis asked: “Where was Bethuel?” The midrash concluded that Bethuel wished to hinder Rebekah's marriage, and so he was smitten during the night. (Genesis Rabbah 60:12.) The Rabbis said that Abraham's servant did not disclose Bethuel's fate to Isaac.[16]
In his retelling of the story, Josephus reported that Rebekah told Abraham's servant, “my father was Bethuel, but he is dead; and Laban is my brother; and, together with my mother, takes care of all our family affairs, and is the guardian of my virginity.”[17]
^"Moed Katan 18b:15". www.sefaria.org. From the Torah, and from the Prophets, and from the Writings; it implies that the decree that a specific woman is destined to be married to a specific man is from God. From where is this derived? It is from the Torah, as it is written: 'Then Laban and Bethuel answered and said: The thing comes from the Lord, we cannot speak to you either bad or good' (Genesis 24:50). From the Prophets, as it is written: "But his father and his mother knew not that it was of the Lord" (Judges 14:4). From the Writings, as it is written: 'House and riches are the inheritance of fathers; but a prudent woman is from the Lord' (Proverbs 19:14).