Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity - If we regard “Gilead,” (as it elsewhere is,) as the country beyond Jordan, where the two tribes and a half dwelt, this will mean that the whole land was banded in one, as one city of evil-doers. It had an unity, but of evil. As the whole world has been pictured as divided between “the city of God” and the city of the devil, consisting respectively of the children of God and the children of the devil; so the whole of Gilead may be represented as one city, whose inhabitants had one occupation in common, to work evil. Some think that there was a city so called, although not mentioned elsewhere in Holy Scripture, near that Mount Gilead, dear to the memory of Israel, because God there protected their forefather Jacob. Some think that it was Ramoth in Gilead , which God appointed as “a city of refuge,” and which, consequently, became a city of Levites and priests Joshua 21:38.
Here, where God had preserved the life of their forefather, and, in him, had preserved them; here, where He had commanded the innocent shedder of blood to be saved; here, where he had appointed those to dwell, whom He had hallowed to Himself, all was turned to the exact contrary. It, which God had hallowed, was become “a city of workers of iniquity,” i. e., of people, whose habits and custom was to work iniquity. It, where God had appointed life to be preserved, was “polluted” or “tracked with blood.” Everywhere it was marked and stained with the bloody footsteps of those, who (as David said) “put” innocent “blood in their shoes which were on their feet” 1 Kings 2:5, staining their shoes with blood which they shed, so that, wherever they went, they left marks and signs of it.” “Tracked with blood” it was, through the sins of its inhabitants; “tracked with blood” it was again, when it first was taken captive 2 Kings 15:29, and “it, which had swum with the innocent blood of others, swam with the guilty blood of its own people.” It is a special sin, and especially avenged of God, when what God had hallowed, is made the scene of sin.