The cult of the god Gad in ancient Israel is at first glance obscure. As a god identified with good fortune (the word gad means “fortune, happiness”), the divine name is attested sporadically in the Bible as well as in personal names and inscriptions from the larger Syro-Palestinian region. The laconic quality of personal names provides few hints about his character and identity, while the single literary text in which the divine name occurs is highly polemical and of limited use (Isa 65:11). Further complicating matters is that not only was there a god in the southern Levant known as Gad, but the noun gad was also commonly used in personal names in its appellative sense to identify a particular god as a source of good fortune. During the first millennium it seems a variety of gods could be described as a source of gad, as reflected in the personal names gdmlqrt (“Melqart is fortune”), gdʿštrt (“Astarte is fortune”), gdnbw (“Nabu is fortune”), gdyhw (“Yahu is my fortune”), gdyʾl (“El is my fortune”), mlkmgd (“Milkom is fortune”), ṣlmgd (“Ṣlm is fortune”). Eventually the name gad was generalized and came to be used as a title for patron deities of cities, tribes, and localities in the Graeco-Roman Near East (Höfner 1965: 438-39; Lipiński 1995: 62-64; Kaizer 1997; Ribichini 1999: 340).
So who was the god Gad? Why was he worshipped among so many cultures? And what was his relationship to other better known high gods? Unfortunately, there has been rather limited investigation into the origin and nature of the deity. Although the existence of a god named Gad has long been recognized (Noth 1966: 126-127), the general tendency of biblical scholarship has been to treat him as an abstract figure exclusively associated with the concept of fortune and thus essentially a lesser divinity in the West Semitic pantheon. For example, J. Tigay classified Gad among “semi-divine beings or spirits instead of full-fledged deities…. Like tyche, gad was sometimes personified and worshipped as the genius or fortune of an individual, a tribe, a city, a garden, or a well” (1987: 163-167), and S. Ribichini similarly states, “Gad is the name of a deity of good luck, equivalent to the Greek Tyche and Latin Fortuna” (1999: 339). Furthermore, in connection with the assumption that Gad arose as a personification, the worship of this deity has often been regarded as a specifically late religio-historical phenomenon, corresponding to its occurrence in Isa 65 and attestation in Aramaic, Nabatean, Palmyrenian, and Safaitic personal names from the 5th century and later (Schunck 1975: 383-84; Maier 1992: 863-64; Naʿaman 1999: 144).
However, the assumption that Gad was a personification comparable to Greek tyche or a late development in West Semitic religion is not borne out by a closer examination of the evidence. We have clear attestation of Gad used as a self-standing theophoric in West Semitic proper names from the Late Bronze into the late first millennium:
- ndrgd “Gad promised” in Ugaritic (Gröndahl 1967: 126); cf. ʾelnadar “El promised” in the Murashu archive (Coogan 1976: 13), ndrbwl/ndrbl “Bel promised” from Palmyra (Lidzbarski 1898: 322), and nḏrʾl “El promised” in Safaitic (Harding 1971: 585).
- az-gu-di/az-qu-du “Gad is protection” in West Semitic preserved in Neo-Assyrian (Fales 1979: 68); cf. ʿzbʿl “Baal is protection” in Aramaic (BPPS 105) and ʿzʾl “El is protection” in Ammonite (WSS 961).
- gdrm “Gad is exalted” and gdql “Gad has spoken” in Aramaic (Maraqten 1988: 75); cf. ʾlrm “El is exalted” in Hebrew (Albertz 2012: 571) and Ammonite (WSS 864) and bʿlrm “Baal is exalted” in Phoenician (Benz 1972: 98); qlyhw “YHW has spoken” (Albertz 2012: 586) in Hebrew and bʿlrgm “Baal has spoken” (Maraqten 1988: 73) in Aramaic.
- ʾbrgd “Gad is strong/my strength” (Avigad 1966: 243-44), gdytn “Gad has given” (Benz 1972: 102), and gdnʿm “Gad is kind” (idem.: 102) in Phoenician; cf. ʾbrbʿl “Baal is strong” in Phoenician (Benz 1972: 55) and ʾbryhw “YHW is strong” in Hebrew (Albertz 2012: 557); ytnbʿl “Baal gave” in Phoenician (idem: 129) and yhwntn “YHW gave” in Hebrew (Albertz 2012: 593); nʿmʾl “El is kind” in Phoenician (Benz 1972: 147) and Hebrew (Albertz 2012: 573).
- ʿzgd “Gad is protection” (Ezra 2:12; 8:12; Neh 7:17; 10:16) and mgdlgd “Tower of Gad” (Josh 15:37) in Hebrew; ʾšr, a near synonym of gd, also occurs as a theophoric in ʾšrḥy “Asher lives” in Hebrew (Albertz 2012: 574) and Phoenician ʾšršlḥ “Asher has set free” (Benz 1972: 73).
- gdmlk “Gad is king” in Moabite (Mitchell 1994: 191-200); cf. ʾlmlk “El is king” in Ammonite (BPPS 163).
- gdʿzr “Gad has helped” in Ammonite (CAI 147:4:1); cf. ʾlʿzr “El has helped” in Hebrew (Albertz 2012: 546), bʿlʿzr “Baal has helped” in Phoenician (Benz 1972: 96), and hddʿzr “Hadad has helped” in Aramaic (WSS 785).
In none of the above personal names is it plausible to interpret gad or ʾšr in its generic appellative sense. In line with West Semitic theophoric personal names more generally, gad is appended to a predicative element in the form of an adjective or verb, implying that it functions as the personal subject in the simple sentences.
Furthermore, in all of the above cases the god Gad is treated as a distinct mythological figure with powers to intervene in the lives of individuals virtually indistinguishable from regular high gods. Gad is said to have made good on a vow, to have provided protection, to be exalted and strong, to have bestowed a child, to be king, etc., statements that elsewhere in the West Semitic onomasticon are used to describe deities such as El, Baal, or YHWH. In addition, Gad is consistently implied to have been a male based on the use of masculine verbs and adjectives in the associated predicative elements. The evidence of personal names shows that Gad was conceptualized as a male divinity throughout his millennia long career and it is only in the Hellenistic period when we find gad used as an epithet for female deities in the Punic world and in Graeco-Roman Syria, likely a result of Greek influence that conceived the patron goddess of a city/kingdom as tyche (Lipiński 1995: 62-64).
The traditional interpretation of Gad as a personification of “fortune” has relied to a great extent on Isa 65 as well as later Graeco-Roman sources that equate gad with tyche (e.g. Blenkinsopp 2003: 278-79). But Isa 65 is a problematic source for elucidating the earlier West Semitic understanding of Gad. The consensus of modern scholarship is that chap 65 belongs to the latest strata of the book and the reference to Gad is found in a polemical accusation that members of the Jerusalem community have abandoned YHWH to worship Gad and Meni, the god and goddess of fortune and fate. The language is highly rhetorical, as suggested by the dense use of wordplay and metaphor in the surrounding literary context. In this case, the prophetic author is not describing Gad and Meni as they would have been understood by actual worshippers of these deities, but is using them as a foil for YHWH in order to dramatize and exaggerate the impiety of his adversaries (Hanson 1979: 198). Further, the Graeco-Roman understanding of gad as a generic appellative equivalent to tyche is clearly a late historical development. As I mentioned above, in earlier West Semitic sources Gad is used as the proper name of a specific male deity.
Because the god Gad is only sporadically attested in personal names before the 5-4th century and yet appears with the same kinds of predicates as major high gods, it seems unavoidable that the name functioned as an epithet and referred to a deity commonly known by another name. The widespread attestation of theophoric personal names that link a major high god with gad in the predicative element noted above shows that the concept of good fortune and fate was not unrelated to these deities’ characters and in fact was integral to their role in personal religion (deity X is “good fortune”). If a god could be tied to gad in an appellative sense, it is not so strange to think that a god could be referred to as Gad or Fortune in itself. Otherwise we would have to conclude that Gad was a god who was believed to intervene favorably in the lives of individuals and had the powers of other major deities but was only occasionally called upon or credited with having served as a personal god. We have many examples in the ancient Near East where a deity was known by multiple epithets (e.g. El = Baal, Shaddai, and Elyon), and neither is the use of a common noun as though it were a proper name exceptional in the wider context of West Semitic divine names (e.g. ʾb “father”=Father; ʾl “god”=El; bʿl “lord”=Baal; mwt “death”=Death; šm “name”=Name).
Assuming that Gad is an epithet of another common West Semitic divinity, one candidate looms before all others as the preeminent source of fortune in the West Semitic sphere, namely, the god El. From Ugarit to Israel-Judah to Arabia, El seems to have had a particularly close relationship to gad as the determiner of fate and fortune. First, I have already noted that the god El is associated with gad as an appellative. This includes the name ilgdn from Ugarit, the predicative element of which has generally been derived from gad (cf. Gröndahl 1967: 126; Fales 1979: 68; Ribichini and Xella 1991: 160); Hebrew gdyʾl “El is my fortune” (Num 13:10); West Semitic ga-di-ilu “El is my fortune” preserved in Neo-Assyrian (Tallqvist 1914: 255); and gdʾl “El is fortune” in North Arabian (Harding 1971: 154). Second, most of the names that occur with the theophoric element Gad have close analogues in El names with the same predicate in West Semitic. For example, ndrgd “Gad promised” in Ugaritic corresponds to Elnadar “El promised” in West Semitic and nḏrʾl “El promised” in Safaitic; gdrm “Gad is exalted” in Aramaic to ʾlrm “El is exalted” in Hebrew; gdnʿm “Gad is kind” in Phoenician to nʿmʾl “El is kind” in Phoenician; ʿzgd “Gad is protection” in Hebrew to ʿzʾl “El is protection” in Ammonite and Aramaic; gdmlk “Gad is king” in Moabite to ʾlmlk “El is king” in Ammonite; and gdʿzr “Gad has helped” in Ammonite to ʾlʿzr “El has helped” in Hebrew. In other words, the same kinds of statements made in devotion to Gad are also made in reference to El. The overlap between Gad and El is particularly apparent in the Arabian sphere, where we find names such as gddʾl “Gad determined” (Harding 1971: 154) and gdšfq “Gad had compassion” (idem: 155) and the corresponding gdnʿm/nʿmgd “Gad is kind” (idem: 156, 594) and ʾlnʿm/nʿmʾl “El is kind” (idem: 71, 594); gdyfʿ “Gad has shone forth” (idem: 154) and ʾlyfʿ/ yfʿʾl “El has shone forth” (idem: 73, 679); and slmgd “Gad has made whole” (idem: 154) and slmʾl “El has made whole” (idem: 325).
Third, in Israel-Judah we have more specific support for equating Gad and El. The place name Baal Gad can mean either “Baal is good fortune” (Naʿaman 1999: 144), “Baal of fortune” (cf. Baal Hamon), or “Gad is Baal” (Noth 1966: 126, n. 3). In any case, the Baal referenced is likely to have been El, since it is located in the valley of Lebanon below Mount Hermon (Josh 11:17; 12:17; 13:5). I have elsewhere discussed evidence that the “Baal” of Mount Lebanon was El and that in the context of ancient Israel more generally Baal was used as an epithet of El. In addition, a town in Judah is named Migdal Gad (Josh 15:37) and in Naphtali there is a Migdal El (Josh 19:38), thus implying a functional identity between Gad and El. In the Hebrew Bible the migdal of Shechem is associated with another El deity, El-berit (Jgs 9:46-47).
Fourth, in Gen 30:9-13 Gad and Asher seem to be used as divine epithets for the personal god of the narrative (Westermann 1995: 475). Leah’s maid Zilpah bears a son and then she exclaims bgd “By [my] Fortune!” A second son is born and she exclaims again bʾšry “by my Luck.” Throughout most of the birth narrative of the tribal ancestors YHWH is referred to as Elohim (30:2, 6, 18, 20, 22), or El. As I mentioned earlier, the theophoric element Asher is attested in Hebrew and Phoenician personal names, ʾšrḥy “Asher lives” and ʾšršlḥ “Asher has set free.” In view of the close association of personal gods with good fortune in the southern Levant, the theophoric is most likely a divine epithet derived from the root ʾŠR “happiness.”
Lastly, an altar from Nabataean Hauran was found in the 19th century that included a dedicatory inscription by individuals who refer to themselves as rḥmy gdʾ “friends of the Gad” (Littmann 1904: 93-94). Significantly, gad here is simply “the gad,” not the gad of so and so. His identity is thus obvious enough for the dedicators that no further specification was necessary. Several clues allow us to identify the deity: 1) The phrase “friends of gad” is evocative of the kinds of terms of endearment that were characteristic and distinctive to the cult of West Semitic El. At Ugarit various beloveds of El are known, including one litany that refers to a number of divinities defeated by Anat, and El appears as the theophoric in the Akkadian Ugaritic personal name il tappa “El is friend” (Gröndahl 1967: 201). Closer in time and space are the personal names ḥbbʾl, ḥbʾl, or wdʾl in Thamudic and Safaitic inscriptions (Harding 1971: 172), or the later Islamic concept of Wali Allah “beloved of Allah.” In the Bible several figures bear the name rʿʾl, “companion of El”, including Moses’ father-in-law (Ex 2:18). In James 2:23 Abraham is called philos theou, “the friend of God”. 2) On each side of the altar sculpted bull images are displayed prominently. Known for its virility and strength, the bull was a long enduring and widely distributed symbol for the high god El. 3) The personal names contained in the inscription lend support to seeing an identity between El and “the Gad”. One of the “friends” is named ṣʿdʾl “El helps.” He is the son of wtrw, which, interestingly, is cognate to the name of Moses’ father-in-law Jethro. In addition, the name of the sculptor is ḥnʾl “El was gracious.”
The god Gad thus appears not to have been an independent West Semitic deity, but merely an epithet of El, the personal god par excellence in the southern Levant. Based on the occurrence of the epithet at Ugarit and its widespread usage in Canaanite and Arabian cultures, its application to El probably occurred quite early in the development of West Semitic religion and was integral to his conceptual profile. As the ancestral god of the Canaanite peoples, it makes sense that El would have been closely linked to the concepts of fortune and fate. In the ancient Near East the gods were believed to be responsible for the maintenance of the cosmos and the wellbeing of the individual and family, and in the southern Levant this role fell particularly to the gods El and Asherah. At Ugarit, El is the highest authority and source of blessing; El is said to have the power to determine “a life of good fortune” (1.3 V 30-31; 1.4 IV 41-43; cf. Smith 2009: 353). In Amherst Papyrus 63 Bethel is a creator and father god and so has power over the destinies of his people; he provides fertility, food, and protection (Steiner 2003: 309-327). At Byblos King Yehawmilk prays that the Lady of Byblos, a Phoenician form of Asherah, may “bless [him], and may she keep him alive, and prolong his days and years over Byblos… and give him favor in the eyes of the gods and in the eyes of the people” (KAI 10: 8-10).
As is well known, comparable roles are ascribed to YHWH-El in the Bible. A poem in 1 Sam 2:3-8 preserves an early text that can be assumed to reflect more popular beliefs about El as a god of fortune and fate:
A god of knowledge is YHWH (=El), a god who balances his actions;
The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird on strength;
Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry cease forever;
The barren has borne seven, but she who has many children is bereaved;
YHWH causes to die and brings to life, he brings down to Sheol and raises up;
YHWH makes poor and makes rich, he makes low, he also exalts;
He raises up the poor from the dust, he lifts the needy from the ash heap,
To make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor.
Because El and Asherah were the primary head of the Israelite-Judahite pantheon, we can assume that they would have had a preeminent role with regard to general prosperity and wellbeing, as well as the cyclic processes of life. This de facto made them the locus of fate and fortune for both communities and individuals (cf. Jer 44). Just as many religious people today relate their good or bad fortune to a transcendent high god who governs over the affairs of humankind, so did people in ancient Palestine see El and Asherah as particularly implicated in the vicissitudes and precariousness of life.
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