The hill country EAST of the Jordan, the highlands where Laban overtook the fleeing Jacob and the two made their treaty (31:21-54). Genesis derives the name here from the treaty-heap: Jacob calls it GALEED (gal-ed, 'heap of witness'), and Laban names the same heap in Aramaic, Jegar-sahadutha — the earliest Aramaic in the Bible — and the name Gilead sticks to the whole region. It becomes one of Israel's most storied territories: the balm of Gilead, the home of Jephthah and of the prophet Elijah the Tishbite, the pasture-land of Reuben and Gad, and, at this treaty-line, the boundary between Jacob's people and the Aramean world he is leaving behind.
Approximate. Gilead is a geographic name rather than a fixed state — the highlands east of the Jordan between the Yarmuk and the north end of the Dead Sea, split by the Jabbok into a northern and southern half. Its western edge (the Jordan) is exact; its eastern edge dissolves into the desert.
📍 Gilead — modern-day The highlands of northwest Jordan, east of the Jordan River (the Ajlun/Jerash region)
🗺️ No ancient-world overlay on the shelf yet for this site — a period map
showing how the region actually looked in the biblical world gets added here as Mr. Librarian curates one,
the same way the encyclopedia's film shelf grows.
▶ No films on the shelf yet — archaeology and geography videos get added here as Mr. Librarian finds good ones.