Laban first appears in the Hebrew Bible in Genesis 24:29–60 as the grown spokesman for his father Bethuel's house; he was impressed by the gold jewelry given to his sister on behalf of Isaac, and played a key part in arranging their marriage.

Though the biblical text itself does not attest to this, rabbinic sources also identify Laban as the father of Bilhah and Zilpah, the two concubines with whom Jacob also has children.

Laban's urge to ensure his older daughter not be left unmarried can be interpreted as leading to the Exile in Egypt; his anxiety over seeing his son-in-law throw away his family's comfortable position in Aram in search of a risky new beginning back in Canaan leads him to oppose the return of the Children of Israel to the Promised Land.

[6] The question of what the connection is between the apparently disjoint tales of Laban and Pharaoh is interpreted in several ways by rabbinical authorities.

Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer explains in his Hukkat HaPesach that Laban was, in fact, the driving force of the entire Exile and Exodus saga.

In this counterfactual, Jacob's favoring Joseph's succession as the leader of the fledgling nation of Israel would have been seen as perfectly normal and fitting, given the customs of the time.

Devora Steinmetz, assistant professor of Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, says that the story of Jacob and Laban also resonates with the covenant with Abraham, more frequently interpreted as applying to the Exodus: "your seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them and they shall afflict them ...

The story thus serves to reinforce one of the central messages of the Passover Haggadah; that the Old Testament cycle of exile, persecution and return recurs again and again, and links the observant Jew in the Diaspora to the Land of Israel.