Jegar-Sahadutha

Jegar-sahadutha — UPDV spells it "Jegar-saha-dutha" — is the Aramaic name Laban gives to the heap of stones raised on Mount Gilead at the end of his pursuit of Jacob. The heap is named twice in the same verse, once in Laban's tongue and once in Jacob's; the same place, witnessed by the same cairn, carries both names in parallel.

The Witness Cairn

When Laban overtakes Jacob in the hill country and the two men come to terms, the agreement is sealed by a covenant and marked by stones. Laban proposes the covenant: "let us make a covenant, I and you; and let it be for a witness between me and you" (Gen 31:44). Jacob first sets up a single pillar, then his brothers raise a cairn beside it: "And Jacob said to his brothers, Gather stones; and they took stones, and made a heap: and they ate there by the heap" (Gen 31:46). The naming follows immediately and bilingually: "And Laban called it Jegar-saha-dutha: but Jacob called it Galeed" (Gen 31:47).

The function of the heap is then declared. "And Laban said, This heap is witness between me and you this day. Therefore was the name of it called Galeed: and Mizpah, for he said, [the Speech of] Yahweh watch between me and you, when we are absent one from another" (Gen 31:48-49). Jegar-saha-dutha is the witness-heap under its Aramaic name, fixed at the same Gileadite spot whose Hebrew name is Galeed and whose watch-name is Mizpah.