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.