Gad (, ) was a seer or

prophet In religion, a prophet or prophetess is an individual who is regarded as being in contact with a divinity, divine being and is said to speak on behalf of that being, serving as an intermediary with humanity by delivering messages or teachings ...

mentioned in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Josephus Flavius Josephus (; , ; ), born Yosef ben Mattityahu (), was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing '' The Jewish War'', he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of pr ...

. He was one of the personal prophets of

King David David (; , "beloved one") was a king of ancient Israel and Judah and the third king of the United Monarchy, according to the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament. The Tel Dan stele, an Aramaic-inscribed stone erected by a king of Aram-Damas ...

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

and, according to the

Talmud The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of Haskalah#Effects, modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cen ...

ic tradition, some of his writings are believed to be included in the

Books of Samuel The Book of Samuel () is a book in the Hebrew Bible, found as two books (1–2 Samuel) in the Old Testament. The book is part of the Deuteronomistic history, a series of books (Book of Joshua, Joshua, Book of Judges, Judges, Samuel, and Books of ...

. He is first mentioned in telling David to return from refuge in

Moab Moab () was an ancient Levant, Levantine kingdom whose territory is today located in southern Jordan. The land is mountainous and lies alongside much of the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. The existence of the Kingdom of Moab is attested to by ...

to the forest of Hereth in the land of Judah. The next biblical reference to Gad is () where, after David confesses his sin of taking a

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

of the people of Israel and Judah, God sends Gad to David to offer him a choice of three forms of punishment. Gad is mentioned a final time in the

in , coming to David and telling him to build an altar to God after God stops the plague that David had chosen as punishment. The place indicated by Gad for the altar is "in the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite". tells of an encounter Gad had with the angel of the Lord. A tomb attributed to Gad is located at Halhul.''Burial Places of the Fathers'', published by Yehuda Levi Nahum in book: ''Ṣohar la-ḥasifat ginzei teiman'' (Heb. צהר לחשיפת גנזי תימן), Tel-Aviv 1986, p. 253 (Hebrew)

The Chronicles of Gad the seer

The words, or chronicle, of Gad the seer are mentioned in and are generally considered a lost text.

References

11th-century BCE Hebrew people Angelic visionaries