Difference between revisions of "Galeed"

<p> ("a witness heap".) A [[Hebrew]] name given by Jacob to the heap which he and Laban reared on mount Gilead, a memorial of their brotherly covenant (&nbsp;Genesis 31:47-48). Laban called it in [[Aramaic]] (Chaldee or Syriac), Jegar-Sahadutha. (See [[Jegar-Sahadutha]] Apparently Nahor's family originally spoke Syriac, and [[Abraham]] and his family acquired Hebrew in Canaan, where the Hebrew was indigenous when he first settled there, the Hamitic [[Canaanites]] having learned it from an earlier Semitic race. The memorial heap marked the crisis in Jacob's life when he became severed from his [[Syrian]] kindred, and henceforth a sojourner in, and heir of, Canaan. </p>

<p> ''''' gal´ē̇ ''''' - ''''' ed ''''' ( גּלעד , <i> ''''' gal‛ēdh ''''' </i> ): Derived from the Hebrew <i> ''''' gal ''''' </i> , "a heap of stones," and <i> ''''' ‛ēdh ''''' </i> , "witness." The meaning therefore is "cairn" or "heap of witness," corresponding to <i> ''''' yeghar ''''' </i> - <i> ''''' sāhădhūthā' ''''' </i> in Aramaic (&nbsp;Genesis 31:47 ). It is applied to the cairn raised by Jacob and Laban, beside which they sealed their covenant in a common meal, the memory of which they appealed to the silent cairn to preserve. The ancient custom of associating events with inanimate objects as witnesses is often illustrated in Hebrew history (&nbsp;Joshua 4:4 , etc.). There may be in this narrative a suggestion of how the name "Gilead" came to be applied to that country. </p>