גַּד

From the study of Isaiah 65:11

Range of meaning

Means 'fortune, good luck', and also the name of the god who personified it. The word works both ways: luck itself, and Luck as a divine being who could be worshipped.

Against the English

BSB, WEB, ESV, NIV and NASB have 'Fortune'. A capital letter is easy to miss, and most modern readers hear 'luck' rather than a god. KJV's 'that troop' comes from linking Gad with a similar word for a raiding band (gədûd, the pun in Genesis 49:19), and it hides the god completely. YLT and the KJV margin keep the name 'Gad'.

How it drifted

Translators chose to render the meaning of the name rather than keep it as a name. That makes sense, but in modern English 'fortune' is an impersonal idea, not a deity with a cult.

Used elsewhere in the period

Genesis 30:11, where Leah names her son Gad with the cry 'With fortune!' (the written text reads bgd, read aloud as bā' gād, 'fortune has come'). Place names Baal-gad (Joshua 11:17) and Migdal-gad (Joshua 15:37) suggest a cult in Canaan. In Aramaic, Palmyrene and Nabataean inscriptions gd is a tutelary 'Fortune' of a city or person, equated with the Greek goddess Tyche (the 'Gad of Tadmor'). The Talmud knows a 'couch of Gad' kept in homes for luck (b. Nedarim 56a). The Septuagint here translates it daimonion, 'divine power, demon'.