Genesis 22:20/22 names Betu-El as the son of Nachor and Milkah, Nachor being Av-Ram's brother. His own brothers are Uts (עוץ), Buz (בוז), Kemu-El (קמואל) the father of Aram (ארם), Kesed (כשד), Chazo (חזו), Pildash (פלדש) and Yidlaph.(ידלף). Verse 23 names him as the father of Lavan (Laban) and Rivkah (Rebecca).
On the surface this appears to be little more than a tribal genealogy. Etymology reveals more however.
Nachor: from the root Nachar (נחר), means "to breathe hard" or "snort", which identifies the Bull God El and thereby Hittite origins. Av-Ram as his "brother" probably indicates the amalgamation of two local versions of the same cult; from which we can therefore identify Av-Ram himself as the bull-god El (see Av-Raham). Elsewhere (see the notes to HARAN) he is identified even more specifically as Inachus, the river-god.
Milkah means "queen", and as wife of the Bull God she is clearly the Queen of Heaven, Astarte, herself. Given the link between Nachor and Av-Ram, we can deduce much about Sarai from this explanation too.
Uts is generally reckoned to be the eastern part of Edom, where the Arabian Desert comes down to the Euphrates; it is the land from which Iyov (Job) came.
Buz (cf Jeremiah 25:23 and 1 Chronicles 5:14) is in the same general locality as Uts.
Kemu-El: Kamah (קמה) means "a gathering together" or "congregation"; from which "Kemu-El the father of Aram" can be taken to mean the whole assembly of the El-worshiping Aramaeans, a religiously focused tribal grouping, the name Kemu-El itself the title of the tribal priest-king.
Kesed is Kasdim, or Sumer, or Chaldea, depending on the epoch. Av-Ram's tribe is said to have come originally from Ur Kasdim, which means "the city of Kesed" and is usually rendered in English as Ur of the Chaldees. Ur, like Charan, was a moon-shrine.
Chazo: from the root Chozeh (חזה) = "a seer". Again a title - the equivalent of Shemu-El (Samuel) or Merlin.
Pildash: the etymology here is obscure. Possibly an error for Pilgash = "concubine"; however...
Yidlaph: means "weeping", from the root Dalaph (דלף) = "to drip" or "to shed tears". In Esther 9:7 we are told that Chaman (Haman), the stone idol of the sun-god in Persia who is anthropomorphised as Prime Minister Haman in the Esther version, had a son named Dalphon (דלפון), from which we can read Dalaph as a deity, possibly even a marriage of Yah and Dalphon - and if so, the equivalent of the "marriage" of Shimshon (Samson) with Delilah: moon and sun.
As to Betu-El himself, this may be a variant of Beit-El (Bethel), which is a "baetylos" or stone pillar set up by the megalithic peoples to worship the gods - and specifically the various "hosts" of the heavens: thus the ladder which Ya'akov dreamed at Beit-El is a figuration of the Milky Way, and many of the world's baetyloi turn out to be meteroic "Thunderstones". The ancient royal city of Luz in Kena'an became known as Beit-El in the time of Yehoshu'a (though Biblical references attempt to push the date back to patriarchal times). It was a mountain shrine. The Ark of the Covenant was kept there temporarily. It has a significant role in the tales of both Av-Raham and Ya'akov. Yerav-Am (Jeroboam) returned it to its origins by reviving the worship of golden calves there. See Beit-El.
Betu-El's children are Lavan (Laban) and Rivkah (Rebecca). Lavan (לבן) means "white"; Ha Lavanah (הלבנה) - the White One - is the normal epithet for the moon-goddess. Rivkah actually means "a rope with a noose", which is probably why Av-Raham's servant Eli-Ezer put a ring in her nose when he took her back for Yitschak; this being the ancient practice for the purchase of cattle. The Aramaean moon-goddess was portrayed as a horned cow, each horn representing one of the two lunar crescents, which is to say the waxing and waning moons; Io and Hat-Hor are likewise represented, and the shrine of Ashterot Karnayim reflects this too. Le'ah was probably another version of this same deity.
What we have then, in fact, is not a tribal genealogy but a compressed account of the Aramaean religion, their gods and their tribal domain - compressed in order to conceal the original nature of the patriarchs. It begins as Hittite, with the bull-god Nachor coming down from the Taurus mountains with his wife Milkah, the Queen of Heaven, and amalgamating with or conquering the aboriginal, megalith-worshipping peoples of Aram. From the considerable amount of intermarriage and endogamy referred to with both Yitschak and Ya'akov, it seems to be an amalgamation of matriarchal Yah-worshippers (Hittites) with patriarchal El-worshipers (Hurrians).
The new ruling divinity, the bull-god, becomes known as El. The religious centre is Charan, which is thought to mean "mountaineer", though this may be an error for Haran, Nachor and Av-Raham's youngest brother: Beit Haran would mean "the mountain shrine". However there is also Beit Choron in Joshua 16:5 and 21:22), an upper and a lower Beit Choron indeed, located inside the tribal territory of Ephrayim, so all we can say is that there is a mixing-up of he Heys and the Chets in this particular word, and they may be one word differently spelled, and they may be two different words with the same meaning.
Either way, the territory of C(h)aran in Padan Aram extended across Kesed, Uts and Buz, as well as down into Kena'an, where Yericho (Jericho) was the third of the ancient world's principal moon-shrines (Yericho - ירחו - from Yare'ach/ירח, being one of the Yehudit words for "the moon", Ha Lavanah, as noted above, being the other). Charan was its centre because of the ka'aba or baetyl, the natural, probably granite, rock around which ancient worship grew up in megalithic times, and which later peoples extended into a temple by erecting further granite boulders as pillars or Asherim around it. Its principal god was El; the congregation of all the people was entitled Kemu-El. The Priest-King who ruled in his name (as Ba'al in the heavens ruled on behalf of his father El) was given the title Lavan, and his "sister", the priestess, the title "Rivkah" - both of which further identify the cult as moon-worshipping. But actual ceremonies, as well as prophetic oracles, were in the hands of the working priesthood, whose High Priest was named Chazo. Other gods worshipped in the pantheon included Yidlaph the sun-god. The place of Pildash in all this cannot be ascertained, but in all likelihood these latter names, Pildash and Yidlaph, are a residue of the aboriginal language and religion of Aram and may therefore be dialect variations in the same way that Dieu and Dios are today, on the Franco-Spanish border.
Many references are made to Betu-El:
Genesis 24:16 has Av-Raham's servant Eli-Ezer coming upon Rivkah, exactly as Ya'akov will later come upon Rachel, at the well, watering her flock. Meeting her, she is described as being "beautiful and a virgin", though it is unclear how he knows this latter. The word used for virgin is Betulah (בתולה), which is not from the same root as Betu-El, though it sounds remarkably similar, but which I mention because the mutliple names for the varying stages of a female child's growth to full adulthood are significant in the context of Christianity.
Genesis 25:20 finds Yitschak marrying his cousin Rivkah: the practice of endogamy (marrying in) which was normal amongst matriarchal, but not patriarchal tribes. The unwillingness to marry amongst the Beney Kena'an is slightly ironic today, with the knowledge we now have that the Canaanite religion likewise reflected the spread of the Anatolian cults by the wandering Hittites and Aramaeans. The endogamic legends are likely to be post-exilic anyway.
Genesis 28:2 ff tells us that Rivkah sent Ya'akov to Lavan, but that Yitschak sent him to Betu-El - the same outcome, but a very different source-agenda. Another hint of continuing matriarchal and patriarchal conflict?
1 Chronicles 4:30 states that the family of Shim'i lived at Betu-El until King David's time. However this is probably an error for Betul (בְתוּל), a town in the tribe of Shim'on (Simeon), mentioned in Joshua 19:4.
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