The verse is plain, and the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan keeps it that way. "Arise, go to Padan of Aram, to the house of Bethuel thy mother's father, and take thee from thence a wife from the daughters of Laban thy mother's brother" (Genesis 28:2).
Isaac, convinced by Rebekah's argument about the daughters of Heth, sends Jacob north. Not just north — back. Back to the family Rebekah herself came from. Back to the house of Bethuel. Back to Laban, his mother's brother, who has daughters.
The full circle
The rabbis loved the symmetry here. A generation earlier, Abraham had sent his servant Eliezer to that same region, Padan Aram, to find a wife for Isaac. Eliezer returned with Rebekah (Genesis 24). Now Rebekah, grown and wise, sends her own son on the same road to the same family. Jacob is making his mother's journey in reverse.
Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the detail carefully: the house of Bethuel thy mother's father, the daughters of Laban thy mother's brother. The wife must come from inside the covenantal family — not because of biology, but because of shared vision. The women of Heth worshipped stone and idol. The women of Padan Aram, for all their flaws, knew the God of Abraham.
The hidden purposes
There are actually three purposes tucked into this journey. One: find a wife, the stated reason. Two: escape Esau's murderous plot, the reason Rebekah has kept from Isaac. Three: build the twelve tribes of Israel, the reason neither parent yet knows. Padan Aram is where Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah wait, and where eleven of Jacob's twelve sons will be born.
The takeaway: sometimes you leave home for one reason and discover you were sent for three. Pseudo-Jonathan's Jacob walks out of his father's tent thinking he is going to find a wife. He is actually going to become a nation.