Name and Etymology

Gilead (Hebrew gil‛âd) may mean hill of testimony. It is derived from galyêd, which in turn comes from gal (heap, mound, hill) and ‛êd (witness, testimony). There also exists an alternative theory that it means rocky region.

Gilead as a Person and Tribal Group

Gilead was, according to the Book of Numbers

Book of Numbers

The Book of Numbers is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch....

, the son of Machir

Machir

Machir/Makir - meaning bartered - was the name of two figures in the Bible.1. Machir, the son of Manasseh, and father of Gilead....

, and hence the grandson of Manasseh

Manasseh (tribal patriarch)

Manasseh or Menashe was, according to the Book of Genesis, the first son of Joseph and Asenath. Asenath was an Egyptian woman whom Pharaoh gave to Joseph as wife, and the daughter of Potipherah, a priest of On. Manasseh was born in Egypt before the arrival of the children of Israel from Canaan...

, great-grandson of Joseph

Joseph (Hebrew Bible)

Joseph is an important character in the Hebrew bible, where he connects the story of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Canaan to the subsequent story of the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt....

 and greatx4 grandson of Abraham and Sarah

Sarah

Sarah or Sara was the wife of Abraham and the mother of Isaac as described in the Hebrew Bible and the Quran. Her name was originally Sarai...

. He also may have been the founder of the Israelite tribal group of Gilead

Gilead (tribal group)

Gilead was a tribal group mentioned in Biblical passages which textual scholars attribute to early sources. In these sources, for example the Song of Deborah, the Gilead group is treated with equal status to the other Israelite tribes, while certain other tribes, including the Tribe of Manasseh,...

, which is mentioned in Biblical

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 passages which textual scholars

Textual criticism

Textual criticism is a branch of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of transcription errors in the texts of manuscripts...

 attribute to early sources; however, the Gilead group is given equal status to a tribal group named Machir

Machir (tribal group)

Machir was the name of a region mentioned in the Song of Deborah in Jud 5:14. The Song of Deborah speaks of officers coming from Machir to join the battle against Sisera....

, in the early biblical passages, as a separate group rather than as a group contained by the Machir group, which seemingly is inconsistent.

Textual scholars regard the genealogy in the Book of Numbers, which identifies Gilead as Machir's son, as originating in the priestly source

Priestly source

The Priestly Source is one of the sources of the Torah/Pentateuch in the bible. Primarily a product of the post-Exilic period when Judah was a province of the Persian empire , P was written to show that even when all seemed lost, God remained present with Israel...

, a document written centuries after the early JE

JE

JE is a hypothetical intermediate source text of the Torah postulated by the DH. It is a combination and redaction of the Jahwist and Elohist source texts. According to this hypothesis, J was composed c. 950 BC, E was composed c. 850 BC, and the two were combined into JE c. 750 BC. JE was...

 source, in which the Gilead and Machir tribal groups are mentioned, and possibly having been written to rival the JE source. Biblical scholars

Biblical criticism

Biblical criticism is the scholarly "study and investigation of Biblical writings that seeks to make discerning judgments about these writings." It asks when and where a particular text originated; how, why, by whom, for whom, and in what circumstances it was produced; what influences were at work...

 view the biblical genealogies as postdiction

Postdiction

According to critics of paranormal beliefs, postdiction is an effect of hindsight bias that explains claimed predictions of significant events, such as plane crashes and natural disasters...

, an eponym

Eponym

An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...

ous metaphor

Metaphor

A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...

 providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the group to others in the Israelite confederation; the identification of Gilead as an aspect of Manasseh was the traditional explanation of why the tribal groups of Machir and Gilead are mentioned along with northern tribes in the ancient Song of Deborah, while Manasseh is absent from it.

The text of the Book of Numbers appears to portray Gilead as the father of Asriel, but the Book of Chronicles states that Manasseh was the father of Asriel; it is possible for there to have been two different Asriels, though Manasseh is only indicated as having had one son – Machir – in the genealogy of the Book of Numbers.

Gilead as a Location

In addition to being used as the name of a person, Gilead is also used as the name for a location in various parts of the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

. The first time it is used in the Bible is called "the mountain of Gilead." Later it is just called "Gilead," or the "land of Gilead." According to Easton's Bible Dictionary, all three of these expressions refer to a region in Transjordan

Transjordan (Bible)

The Transjordan is used to describe an area of land in the Southern Levant lying east of the Jordan River that is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. The area is said to form part of an ill-defined area known as the land of Israel...

, approximately 20 by 60 miles in area. The cities of Gilead, according to Numbers 32, were inhabited by the tribes of Gad

Tribe of Gad

According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Gad was one of the Tribes of Israel.From after the conquest of the land by Joshua until the formation of the first Kingdom of Israel in c. 1050 BC, the Tribe of Gad was a part of a loose confederation of Israelite tribes. No central government existed,...

 and Reuben

Tribe of Reuben

According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Reuben was one of the Tribes of Israel.From after the conquest of the land by Joshua until the formation of the first Kingdom of Israel in c. 1050 BC, the Tribe of Reuben was a part of a loose confederation of Israelite tribes. No central government...

 after the Israelite invasion of Transjordan, after the expulsion of the native Amorite

Amorite

Amorite refers to an ancient Semitic people who occupied large parts of Mesopotamia from the 21st Century BC...

s.

In addition to the references to Gilead as a "land" or "mountain," Gilead is called a city in Hosea

Hosea

Hosea was the son of Beeri and a prophet in Israel in the 8th century BC. He is one of the Twelve Prophets of the Jewish Hebrew Bible, also known as the Minor Prophets of the Christian Old Testament. Hosea is often seen as a "prophet of doom", but underneath his message of destruction is a promise...

6:8: "Gilead is a city of those who work iniquity; it is stained with blood."