Rebekah's brother — and the narrator introduces his character in a single sly stroke: Laban 'ran out to the man, to the spring' (24:29) — but the very next verse tells us WHEN: 'when he saw the nose-ring, and the bracelets on his sister's hands' (24:30). The hospitality has an eye on the gold. He calls the stranger 'blessed of Jehovah' and clears the house, and with his father Bethuel gives Rebekah up graciously enough ('the thing is from Jehovah'). But the man glimpsed here is the same LABAN THE ARAMEAN who, a generation later, will take in the fleeing Jacob, swap Leah for Rachel on the wedding night, cheat his wages ten times over, and chase him down over stolen household idols (Genesis 29–31) — the grasping uncle whose greed the gold at the well already forecasts.