Commentary for Genesis 30:11

בא גד FOR MY HAPPINESS! — Good luck has come, as (Shabbat 67b) “Be lucky, my luck (גד גדי) and tire not”. Similar, also, is (Isaiah 45:11) “That prepare a table for fortune (גד)”. The Midrashic explanation is that he was born with the sign of the covenant upon him. It would then be like (Daniel 4:11) “cut down (גדו) the tree”. I do not know why it (בגד) is written as one word. Another comment on בגד is: why is it read as one word? It may be connected with the root בגד which denotes faithless as though Leah said to Jacob, “You proved faithless to me when you married my handmaid”, like a man who is faithless (בגד) to the wife of his youth).

בא גד, “we have been granted good fortune.” We find the word גד used in a similar sense in Isaiah 65,11 העורכים לגד שלחן, “Who set a table for Luck.” Also the Talmud Shabbat 67 גד גדי וסינוק לא, “be lucky and do not suffer from fatigue,” uses the word גד in this sense. Anyone who translates the word as derived from גדוד, related to a troop, is in error. Even though names usually reflect a popular manner of speaking, such as ראובן being related to ראה, saw, (compare 29,32) or שמעון as related to שמע, (29,33) unless Leah had mentioned the word גדוד when naming this son we would not be able to trace the word גד as an abbreviation of גדוד, (using the letter ד twice) justifying such a comparison. The expression יגודו על נפש צדיק in Psalms 94,21 “they band together to do away with the righteous,” where it does stem from the word גדוד, does so because of the dagesh in the second ד.replaces the missing second ד. We find a parallel construction in Psalms 106,43 וימכו בעונם, where the dagesh in the letter כ of the word וימוכו substitutes for the missing second letter כ of the root מכך. Job 30,12 and 16,13 also have similar constructions where a dagesh substitutes for a missing root letter.

בא גד, this one came coincidentally, for I had not planned to ring him into the world, seeing that I had stopped giving birth. The reason why the word is spelled as a single word with the letter א missing, is to indicate that the conception and pregnancy was not planned but occurred gratuitously. Her pregnancy had somehow become terminated after it had begun. We find a similar construction of the word בגד in Job 6,15: אחי בגדו כמו נחל, “my comrades are fickle like a wadi.”