What Does Genesis 46:16 Mean?

The sons of Gad: Ziphion, Haggi, Shuni, Ezbon, Eri, Arodi, and Arod. Gad's seven sons are the first entry in the Zilpah section of the genealogy. Zilpah, Leah's handmaid, was given to Jacob as a wife when Leah thought she had ceased bearing (Genesis 30:9 to 11). Her sons: Gad and Asher: are among the patriarch-sons who entered Egypt. Gad's seven sons are the largest number of sons in any single patriarch-son's entry, providing the Gad tribe with a fully enumerated set of sub-clan progenitors.

Gad in Jacob's blessing (Genesis 49:19) is characterized with word-play on "gad" (raiders): "Raiders shall raid Gad, but he shall raid at their heels." The seven sons listed here will found the clans of the tribe of Gad as listed in Numbers 26:15 to 18 (with some variant spellings). The tribe of Gad will eventually settle east of the Jordan, in territory associated with military capacity: the blessing's martial imagery is consistent with the tribe's eventual geographic and military position.

Gad's inclusion in the Zilpah group (handmaiden's son) places him genealogically in a different status than Leah's full sons, but the census treats all twelve patriarch-sons equally in the accounting. The democratic structure of the census: each son's sons listed in the same format regardless of the son's maternal origin: is the genealogy's assertion that all twelve sons of Jacob are equally the founders of the twelve tribes of Israel, regardless of which of Jacob's four wives bore them.