Gad: A Name in the Birth List, a Tribe Beyond the Jordan

A son of Israel in the age of the patriarchs

Gad was a son of Israel by Zilpah, born in the era of the patriarchs, placed at around 1996 BC to 1635 BC (era placed on Ussher's chronology, 1650). His name first appears at Genesis 30:11 and is still being written down in the last book of the Bible. Between those two points the name occurs in seventy-one verses across twelve books, but a reader should know at once what kind of occurrences most of these are. The name Gad also carries a tribe and a territory, and most places where it stands are not about the man at all. The person himself is one of the quietest figures in Scripture with so large a footprint.

What the record actually says about the man

Gad is named at his birth in Genesis 30:11. He appears in the list of Israel's sons at Genesis 35:26, and his name stands again at Genesis 46:16, where seven sons are named with him: Ziphion, Haggi, Shuni, Ezbon, Eri, Arod and Areli. His brothers and sister are Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Dinah, Joseph and Benjamin. His name occurs again at Genesis 49:19 and in the roll of Exodus 1:4. That is the whole of the man in narrative terms. No speech of his is recorded. No act of his is described. He is a name in a birth notice, in family lists, and in a genealogy.

Everything that follows in Scripture belongs to those who came after him and bore his name.

Counted for war in the wilderness

At the census in the wilderness the descendants were numbered: "Of the children of Gad, their generations, by their families, by their fathers' houses, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all who were able to go out to war: those who were counted of them, of the tribe of Gad, were forty-five thousand six hundred fifty" (Numbers 1:24-25). A man who never speaks in the text has become a fighting number in a marching camp.

The land east of the Jordan

The most decisive moment for the name comes in Numbers 32. "Now the children of Reuben and the children of Gad had a very great multitude of livestock. They saw the land of Jazer, and the land of Gilead. Behold, the place was a place for livestock. Then the children of Gad and the children of Reuben came and spoke to Moses, and to Eleazar the priest, and to the princes of the congregation, saying," (Numbers 32:1-2). The outcome is recorded a few verses later: "Moses gave to them, even to the children of Gad, and to the children of Reuben, and to the half-tribe of Manasseh the son of Joseph, the kingdom of Sihon king of the Amorites, and the kingdom of Og king of Bashan; the land, according to its cities and borders, even the cities of the surrounding land. The children of Gad built Dibon, Ataroth, Aroer," (Numbers 32:33-34). The same allotment is referred to at Deuteronomy 3:12, Deuteronomy 3:16, Deuteronomy 4:43, Deuteronomy 29:8, Joshua 1:12, Joshua 4:12, Joshua 12:6, Joshua 13:8, Joshua 13:24, Joshua 13:28 and Joshua 18:7.

The altar that nearly caused a war

"The children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh returned, and departed from the children of Israel out of Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan, to go to the land of Gilead, to the land of their possession, which they owned, according to the commandment of Yahweh by Moses. When they came to the region near the Jordan, that is in the land of Canaan, the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh built an altar there by the Jordan, a great altar to look at" (Joshua 22:9-11). The reaction was immediate and grim. Only after Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest and the princes had heard them did it end well: "Today we know that Yahweh is among us, because you have not committed this trespass against Yahweh" (Joshua 22:30-34). The altar was named "A Witness Between Us that Yahweh is God," and the children of Israel "spoke no more of going up against them to war" (Joshua 22:30-34).

Honesty requires the tension to stand: a structure that looked like apostasy brought the nation to the edge of civil war. The quoted verdict clears them of the trespass, and the text says so plainly, but the danger was real.

Failures and later mentions

The dossier records no sin of the man Gad himself. His name later appears in the records and lists of 1 Samuel 13:7, 2 Samuel 23:36, 2 Samuel 24:5, 2 Kings 10:33, Jeremiah 49:1, 1 Chronicles 2:2, 1 Chronicles 5:11, 1 Chronicles 5:18, 1 Chronicles 5:26, 1 Chronicles 6:63, 1 Chronicles 6:80, 1 Chronicles 12:8, 1 Chronicles 12:14, 1 Chronicles 12:37 and 1 Chronicles 26:32. These are mentions, not scenes.

What we do not know

We are told nothing of his character, his years, his death or his burial. We have no word he spoke and no deed he did. What we have is a name, a mother, a father, seven sons, and a very long afterlife for the name.

The name that reaches the New Testament

That afterlife is not finished when the Old Testament closes. Ezekiel places a portion for the name in a land still to be divided: "By the border of Zebulun, from the east side to the west side, Gad, one portion" (Ezekiel 48:27-28; see also Ezekiel 48:34). And the single New Testament reference to this name is Revelation 7:5. A name spoken over a newborn in Genesis 30:11 is still being read out in the last book of Scripture. Whatever else is hidden about this man, God did not lose track of him.