The country allotted to Gad appears, speaking roughly, to have lain chiefly aliout the centre of the land east of Jordan. The south of that district — from the Arnon (wady ]Mojelj), about half WAy down the Der.d Sea, to Heshbon, nearly due east of Jerusalem —
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was occupied by Reuben, and at or about Heshbon the possessions of Gad coninienced. They embraced half Gilead, as the oldest record specially states (Deut. iii, 12), or half the land of the children of Amnion (Josh, xiii, 25), jirobably the mountainous district which is intersected by the torrent Jabliok — if the wady Zurka be the Jabbok — including as its most northern town the ancient sanctuary of Mahanaim. On the east the furthest landmark given is " Aroer, that faces Eab- bah," the present Amman (Josh, xiii, 25). The Ara- bian desert thus appears to have been the eastern boundary. West was the Jordan (Josh, xiii, 27). The northern boundary is somewhat more difficult to de- fine. Gad possessed the whole Jordan valle}' as far as the Sea of Galilee (xiii, 27), but among the mountains eastward the territory extended no fiirther north than the river Jabbok. The border seems to have run diag- onallj' from that point across the mountains by Maha- naim to the southern extremity of the Sea of Galilee (Josh, xii, 1-G ; xiii, 20, 30, 31 ; Deut. iii, 12, 13 ; see Porter's Damascus, ii, 252). The territory thus con- sisted of two comparatively separate and independent parts, (1) the high land on the general level of the
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country cast of Jordan, and (2) the sunk valley of the Jordan itself; the former diminishing at the Jabbok, the latter occupying the whole of the great valley on the east side of the river, and extending up to the very Sea of Cinnereth or Gennesaret itself.
Of the structure and chiiracter of the land which thus belonged to the tribe — " the land of Gad and Gil- ead"— we have only vague information. From the western part of Palestine its aspect is that of a wall of purple mountain, with a singularly horizontal outline ; here and there the surface is seamed by the ravines, through which the tovrents find their way to the Jor- dan, but tliis does not much affect the vertical wall- like look of the range. But on a nearer approach in the Jordan valley, the horizontal outline becomes bro- ken, and when the summits are attained a new scene is said to burst on the view. "A wide table-land ap- pears, tossed about in wild confusion of undulating downs, clothed with rich grass throughout ; in the southern parts trees are thinly scattered here and there, aged trees covered with lichen, as if the relics of a primeval forest long since cleared awaj' ; the northern parts still abound in magnificent woods of sj'camore, beech, terebinth, ilex, and enormous fig- trees. These downs arc broken by three deep defiles, through which the three rivers of the Yarmuk, the Jabbok, and the Arnon fall into the valley of the Jor- dan and the Dead Sea. On the east they melt away into the vast red plain, which by a gradual descent joins the level of the plain of the Hauran, and of the Assyrian desert" (Stanley, Palestine, p. 320). It is a verj' picturesque countr}- — not the " flat, open downs of smooth and even turf" of the country round Heshbon (Irbj', p. 142), the sheep-walks of Reuben and of the Moabites, but "most beautifully varied with hanging woods, mostlj' of the vallonia oak, laurestinus, cedar, arbutus, arbutus andrachne, etc. At times the coun- trj' had all the appearance of a noble park" (ii. p. 147), "graceful hills, rich vales, luxuriant herbage" (Por- ter, Hanclb. p. 310). See Gilead.
Such was the territory allotted to the Gadites ; but there is no doubt that they soon extended themselves beyond these limits. The oflicial records of the reign of Jotham of Judah (1 Chron. v, 11, IG) show them to have been at that time established over the whole of Gilead, and in possession of Bashan as far as Salcah — the modern Sulkhad, a town at the eastern extremity of the noble plain of the Hauran — and verj' far both to the north and the east of the border given them originally, while the ISIanassites were pushed still fur- ther northwards to Mount Hermon (1 Chron. v, 23). They soon became identified with Gilead, that name so memorable in the earliest historj' of the nation ; and in many o" the earlier records it supersedes the name of Gad, as we have already remarked it did that of Bashan. In the song of Deborah, " Gilead" is said to have " abode beyond Jordan" (Judg. v, 17). Jeph- thah appears to have been a Gadite, a native of Miz- peh (Judg. xi, 34 ; compare 31, and Josh, xiii, 26), and yet he is always designated "the Gileadite ;" and so also with Barzillai of Mahanaim (2 Sam. xvii, 27; Ezra ii, Gl ; comp. Josh, xiii, 26).
The following is a list of all the Biblical localities in this tribe, with their probable identifications :
Miip of the Tribe of Gad.
Al)el-cprainiii.
Town.