Gad

גד


The name means Fortune, and as such is linked to the divinity of Fortune, worshipped by the Babylonians, and taken on by the Yehudim in exile; he is elsewhere called Ba'al and Bel, the latter as a courtesy-term for Marduk, with the meaning "Lord" or "Master", and as the planet Jupiter, regarded in the east as the bringer of good fortune. How do we know this?

Genesis 30:11 and 49:19 make him a son of Ya'akov (Jacob), whose patrimony was the mountains of Gil'ad (Gilead) between East Menasheh and Re'u-Ven, on the east side of the river Yarden (Jordan).

cf Deuteronomy 3:12 and 16; Joshua 13:24; Numbers 32:34; Ezekiel 48:27.

His name is also linked to the goat through Gedi (גדי), as in Ein Gedi (עין גדי), the spring of the mountain-goat on the west coast of the Yam Ha Melach (Dead Sea); also with Nachal Ha-Gad (נחל גד), the Valley of the Goats in 2 Samuel 24:5.

Gad also means a "coriander seed", though it is not obvious how this and the goat are connected.

1 Samuel 22:5 et al refer to the prophet Gad who succeeded Shemu-El (Samuel) as the chief prophet in the time of King David. It is no coincidence that much of David's story centres upon Mo-Av (his ancestral tribe) and the region of Ein Gedi and Adul-Am, all of which have Gadite associations as well as being his own tribal lands, David being from the tribe of Yehudah.

Genesis 30:11 announces his birth to Le'ah's maidservant Zilpah, and Le'ah's accompanying remark that "a troop cometh", which is either a jest at his size or an oracular pronouncement. BAGAD (בגד) is of course an absurdity. Ba Gad (בא גד) would indeed mean "a troop cometh" but while there is enormous evidence of the ellipsis of other letters throughout the Tanach, almost invariably in nouns, the dropping of an Aleph (א) from a verbal root is not evidenced anywhere else at all. And besides, of all the tribal aetiologies, this is already the most absurd even before the grammatical implausibility.

There is in fact a root BAGAD (בגד) which came to mean "to act fraudulently or covertly or even perfidiously", which is precisely what the Redactors have done here. It starts as BEGED (בגד) which means "clothing", and then, by a development of the concept of "covering" into "covering up", Isaiah 24:16 and others use it to mean "perfidious behaviour", from which it develops still further and becomes full-scale "treachery" in Zephaniah 3:4.

How Le'ah's statement comes to be translated as "a troop cometh" is beyond explanation, unless the scholars of King James' time had so low an opinion of soldiery as to assume treachery and perfidy wherever they found it. No, what Le'ah said was Ba-Gad (בגד) - today we might say Ba-Mazal (במזל) but much more likely Mazal Tov (מזל טוב), meaning "good fortune" (literally "may the constellations allign in your favour") or "congratulations"; a cry of praise and gratitude to the god of fortune; or, in the original version, a cry of praise and gratitude for the birth of the god of fortune (and remarkably similar, though purely coincidentally so, to the Be-Gad of the pompous Victorians).

The same problem arises with the wording of Ya'akov's blessing (Genesis 49:19): "Gad, a troop shall overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last" is the English translation of the utterly extraordinary Yehudit line: Gad gedod yegudeyno ve hu yagud akev (גדגדוד יגדנו והוא יגד עקב). Again, the troops overcoming him is completely erroneous (though Gedud does mean "a troop", in the sense of "soldiers of fortune" or mercenaries, such as the ones who followed David from his base at Adul-Am, by Ein Gedi).

But it is the latter part of the phrase where real error has occurred. Akev (עקב) means "heel", as we saw when Ya'akov came out of the womb clutching Esav's heel (Genesis 25:19-34) and acquired thereby the Yehudit version of the name Achilles ("sacred heel") or Oedipus ("swollen foot"). The heel of the goat-god was sacred, and Gad is a form of the goat god, in whom, as with Greek Pan, Fortune resided. The ritual immolation of the sacred heel (as in the watered-down version of Achilles, or the still more diluted geisha ritual of binding the ankles) is repeated in a slightly altered manner in Ya'akov's wrestling match at Penu-El, and is the predominant motif of the partridge dance of the original Pesach (Passover) ceremony; instead of anointing and then sacrificing the divine king, as in ancient times, he was anointed and then symbolically wounded, partly to make him limp (the verb is LIPHSO'ACH, whence Pesach) and therefore walk in a more goat-like manner, partly as a metaphor for preventing his feet from touching the profane earth.

Gadad (גדד), which may be a development from the root GAD, means "to cut", and is specifically used for pruning the vine or cutting cloth from the loom, though Jeremiah 16:6 and 41:5 both use it to mean an incision in the skin, and Daniel 4:11 (Daniel 4:14 in most Christian versions) for cutting down a tree. Once again the ritual immolation, this time reflected in that other act of cutting, the Berit Milah or circumcision.

Thus, trying to sustain the puns in English as far as they can be sustained, a better translation of Genesis 49:19 might read:

"Gad will be a soldier of fortune, and he will win his share of luck; a deep cut will be made in his heel."

The goat-cult seems to have been the predominant cult of Edom, for which see my notes to ESAV (Esau), where the sheep was more important to YA'AKOV (Jacob).

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