Rebekah's father — son of Nahor (Abraham's brother) and Milcah (24:15, 24, 47), so Isaac's bride is the granddaughter of Abraham's own brother, kept inside the family the oath required. He is a curiously faint figure: at the decisive moment it is 'LABAN and Bethuel' who answer — the son named before the father (24:50) — and after that Bethuel vanishes from the scene while Laban and the mother do the negotiating. The order has fed old readings that Bethuel was aged, or that Laban had already taken the household in hand; the text simply lets the son speak first and moves on.