The name of his brother Esau may possibly exist in the Babylonian Esê, found on a tablet dated in the reign of Samsu-iluna. Laban does not occur, except as the name of a god in a list of deities worshipped in the city of Aššur. With regard to Bethuel, one cannot help thinking that it must be the same as the place-name Bethel, the terminal _u_ of the nominative being retained in the name of Abraham’s nephew. If this be the case, he may have been so named after the “Bethel of cedar” (see p. 201), though there is just the possibility that, as Gesenius suggests, Bethuel may be for Methuel, the Babylonian _Mut-îli_, “man of god.” That the Bethel of Haran was a heathen place of worship, however, can hardly be regarded as any objection to one of the family to which Abraham and his descendants belonged bearing such a name. If the Hebrew text be correct, therefore, it is probably an abbreviation, forming part of a name similar to Ê-sagila-zērâ-êpuš, “Ê-sagila (the temple of Belus at Babylon) has created a name,” and others like it. It is also to be noted, that the name given by Leah to the son which Zilpah her handmaid bore to Jacob after she herself left off bearing was Gad, rendered in the Hebrew itself by “Fortunate,” and probably the name of a west Semitic deity, Gad, the god of good fortune. But the heathenism of the portion of the family living at or near Haran is clearly proved by the matter of the teraphim, which Rachel stole from her father Laban. It is true that they are generally regarded as figures used for the purpose of magic, but as Laban himself calls them his “gods,” there is every probability that they were worshipped as such. It is to be regarded as simply an indication of the difficulty which most dwellers in the midst of polytheism in those days must have found in dissociating themselves from the practices of those with whom they came daily into contact. They may have had all the tendencies possible towards monotheism, but how were they to embrace it in all its perfection in the midst of a population recounting from time to time the many wonderful things which their gods and protecting genii did for them, and which the hearer had no opportunity of probing to the bottom and estimating at their true value? As these people were, to all appearance, but simple shepherds (though sufficiently wealthy), it is hardly to be expected of them that they would go deeply into philosophical considerations concerning the Deity, especially when we remember that the family of Laban was in close contact with the idolatry of Haran.