When reading through the Bible, have you ever noticed how it just lists off the origins of all sorts of words? Often, we can’t make sense of the explanation without looking at the footnotes. And so, We commonly pass over these things without a second thought. But the history behind the words is fascinating and gives us something to think back on whenever we see that word elsewhere in the Bible.
One great and detailed example is “Gilead”.
In Genesis 31:43-49, we read about how Jacob and Laban made peace with each other after Jacob had fled from Laban:
43 Laban answered Jacob, “The women are my daughters, the children are my children, and the flocks are my flocks. All you see is mine. Yet what can I do today about these daughters of mine, or about the children they have borne?44 Come now, let’s make a covenant, you and I, and let it serve as a witness between us.”
45 So Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar. 46 He said to his relatives, “Gather some stones.” So they took stones and piled them in a heap, and they ate there by the heap. 47 Laban called it Jegar Sahadutha, and Jacob called it Galeed.
48 Laban said, “This heap is a witness between you and me today.” That is why it was called Galeed. 49 It was also called Mizpah, because he said, “May the Lord keep watch between you and me when we are away from each other…”
So, before anything else, the obvious. “Gilead” does not appear in this passage. And that’s true… sort of.
Back in Genesis 31:23, we learn that this encounter takes place in “the hill country of Gilead”. But, remember, the Book of Genesis probably wasn’t written down until several centuries after this event. So, by the time that it was written down, it appears that the Hebrew pronunciation of the word had changed. Originally, the place was called “Galeed”, but after a few centuries of the language naturally changing, people started pronouncing it as something more along the lines of “Gilead”. And that’s why Genesis tells us that the place is Gilead and then goes on to tell us that they named it Galeed.
Galeed/Gilead
Alright, so now that we’ve figured out why this place is called both Galeed and Gilead, we can look at why it’s called these names in the first place.
The Hebrew word gal means “heap” or “mound”. And the word ‛êd means “witness” or “testimony”. So, Jacob and Laban did indeed name the place after the pillar they set up as a covenant. Or, in other words, they made a heap of rocks to memorialize witness towards the peace they reached with each other.
Jegar Sahadutha
So, why on earth did Laban call this place Jegar Sahadutha?
Well, that’s just Aramaic for “witness heap”, so it’s just a translation of Galeed/Gilead from Hebrew to Aramaic. Maybe Aramaic was the language that Laban was more familiar with?
Mizpah
But guess what! There’s another other other name for this place!
As we see in verse 49, the place was also called Mizpah.
Mizpah is Hebrew for “watchtower” (which lines up with what Laban says, also in verse 49). Mizpah is an interesting word used throughout The Old Testament for several different place names.
Gilead, The Man
To throw just one more wrench into this fascinating word, we can look at Numbers 26:29. Here, we learn that a man named Gilead was a great-great grandson of Jacob.
Specifically, he was the grandson of Manasseh, who is the patriarch of the tribe of Manasseh.
We also see a reference to the “Gileadite clan”. Thanks to this and the fact that the half tribe of Manasseh on the east of the Jordan controlled Gilead, it seems that the man Gilead was perhaps in some way named for this region. And, it was his descendants, the Gileadites, who would control the region as a clan in the half tribe of Manasseh.
That last paragraph might not be entirely correct, but from what I’ve read, that seems to most likely be the case.
Gal’azu
During the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the Assyrians of course took the region of Gilead.
When they did so, they also renamed it to the province of Gal’azu.
Conclusion
And so, we have seen that the word Gilead is a direct reference to a certain heap of rocks meant to bear witness to a covenant.
It’s sometimes so easy to just pass over these etymologies that we see in Hebrew. But they are often fascinating and can serve to give us a greater understanding of what the word really means.
