And Laban said
Deceitfully, as the Targum of Jonathan adds, pretending great respect for Jacob, and that what he had proposed was very agreeable to him, when he meant to impose upon him:
[it is] better that I should give her to thee, than that I should give
her to another man;
by which he not only intimates that he preferred him, a relation, to another man, a stranger; but as if he did not insist upon the servitude for her, but would give her to him; unless he means upon the terms proposed, and so it should seem by what follows:
abide with me:
the term of seven years, and serve me; suggesting, that then he agreed Rachel should be his wife; and so Jacob, a plain hearted man, understood him; but he designed no such thing.