Gad

Who is Gad?

Gad was, according to the Book of Genesis, the first son of Jacob and Zilpah, the seventh of Jacob overall, and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Gad; however some Biblical scholars view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation. The text of the Torah argues that the name of Gad means luck/fortunate, in Hebrew, deriving from a root meaning cut/divide, in the sense of divided out; classical rabbinical literature argues that the name was a prophetic reference to the manna; some Biblical scholars suspect that refers to a deity originally worshipped by the tribe, namely Gad, the semitic deity of fortune, who, according to the Book of Isaiah, was still worshipped by certain Hebrews during the 6th century BC.

The Biblical account shows Zilpah's status as a handmaid change to an actual wife of Jacob Genesis 30:9,11. Her handmaid status is regarded by some biblical scholars as indicating that the authors saw the tribe of Gad as being not of entirely Israelite origin; many scholars believe that Gad was a late addition to the Israelite confederation, as implied by the Moabite Stone, which seemingly differentiates between the Israelites and the tribe of Gad. Gad by this theory is assumed to have originally been a northwards-migrating nomadic tribe, at a time when the other tribes were quite settled in Canaan.