Moab | kingdom, ancient Palestine (2024)

FAQs

Who are the descendants of the Moabites today? ›

Moabites today do not exist as a separate people but their descendants may include some of the people of Jordan who live in the biblical territory of Moab.

Moab (/ˈmoʊæb/) is the name of an ancient Levantine kingdom whose territory is today located in the modern state of Jordan. The land is mountainous and lies alongside much of the eastern shore of the Dead Sea.

The name Moab is a Biblical name for a land just short of the Promised Land. The Moabites were historically regarded as the perpetual enemy of the Israelites, "God's Chosen People." Physically, the region was a green, verdant valley in the middle of a serious desert; an emerald in the sand, so to speak.

Moab, kingdom, ancient Palestine. Located east of the Dead Sea in what is now west-central Jordan, it was bounded by Edom and the land of the Amorites. The Moabites were closely related to the Israelites, and the two were frequently in conflict.

Divine law prohibits Moabites from the assembly of God, as a punishment for their maltreatment of the children of Israel and for engaging Balaam to curse the children of Israel, while they journeyed in the wilderness.

Kamōš, often written as Chemosh, is an ancient Semitic deity whose existence is recorded during the Iron Age. Kamōš was the supreme deity of the Canaanite state of Moab and the patron-god of its population, the Moabites, who in consequence were called the "People of Kamōš".

Moabite, member of a West-Semitic people who lived in the highlands east of the Dead Sea (now in west-central Jordan) and flourished in the 9th century bc. They are known principally through information given in the Old Testament and from the inscription on the Moabite Stone.

Bible Gateway Jeremiah 48 :: NIV. Moab will be praised no more; in Heshbon men will plot her downfall: `Come, let us put an end to that nation. ' You too, O Madmen, will be silenced; the sword will pursue you. Listen to the cries from Horonaim, cries of great havoc and destruction.

There is a Jewish tradition stemming from the Talmud, that the descendants of Esau would eventually become the Romans, and to a larger extent, all Europeans.

Moab, descended from Lot through his other daughter, was guilty of descrating the bones of Edom's king (2:1-3). And Judah, in the crowning sin, was guilty of apostasy away from the worship of the true God, forsaking His laws (2:4-5).

What did God call Moab? ›

"Moab is my washpot."—Psalm 60:8. Moab, which had threatened Israel, was to be so completely subdued, and become so utterly contemptible as to be likened to a washpot or basin in which men wash their feet.

By Jeff A. Benner. This name is pronounced mo-ahv in Hebrew. The base word is ahv meaning "father." The prefix mo means "from".

The city was originally founded in mid-1855 as a Mormon mission, but it was abandoned later that year after a conflict with local Indian peoples. Interest in the region was rekindled in the mid-1870s, and a settlement became established there by the early 1880s.

Lot is the father of Moab and thus the ancestor of Ruth; Abraham is the father of Judah, who is the father of Perez, and Boaz comes from the line of Perez (4.18-22).

In the book of Numbers, Balak is the one and only ruler of the kingdom of Moab – whereas in history it would seem that he was a losing rival of Mesha in vying for supremacy over the region east of the Dead Sea.

In the Bible, Chemosh is viewed as a false god who was worshiped by the Moabites. Chemosh is mentioned in several places throughout the Old Testament.

Moabites were pagans and worshiped the god Chemosh. Therefore, Ruth, as a Moabite, is an unlikely hero in Jewish story. However, the story clearly presents Ruth as a hero, for she exhibits several important qualities, valued in the ancient world and in the Bible overall. Ruth is loyal to her mother-in-law, Naomi.

Because king Solomon showed disloyalty to Yhwh and built an altar to the foreign god Kemosh (“the abomination of the Moabites”), Yhwh grew angry with him and tore the kingship from his dynasty (1 Kgs 11). Jeremiah anticipates a day when “Moab will be ashamed of Kemosh” (48:13).

The Moabites were a pagan nation, which means they did not worship or serve YHWH. Idolatry was one of the innate characteristics of all the nations surrounding Israel, and Chemosh was the national god of the Moabites (Numbers 21:29).

The Moabites, Ammonites, and Israelites were reportedly kinsmen, and the Israelites sometimes worshiped Chemosh, as well as their own national god, Yahweh.

Did the Moabites worship Baal? ›

The deity, worshipped by the Moabites, is biblically referred to as Baal-peor (Num. 25:3,5, 18) and as the "house of peor" (בית פעור) (Deuteronomy 3:29), generally meaning the Baal of Peor.

(4-5) Moab's rebellion. Now Mesha king of Moab was a sheepbreeder, and he regularly paid the king of Israel one hundred thousand lambs and the wool of one hundred thousand rams. But it happened, when Ahab died, that the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel.

So far, it can be concluded that in different forms child sacrifices were practiced in three Canaanite successor cultures, the Phoenicio-Punic, the Moabite and the DAT-culture.

Christianity universally marked the Jews as the Other in medieval Europe. In response, the Jews' own Other, Esau and Edom, became Christian.

Unlike the Hurrians, whom they displaced and replaced, the Edomites were a Semitic people who belonged to the waves of Semitic migrations from the Arabian peninsula to the Fertile Crescent, such as the Ammorites, the Canaanites and the Ara- maeans.

Edom, ancient land bordering ancient Israel, in what is now southwestern Jordan, between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba.

One of these difficult texts can be found in the story of the Israelite judge Ehud and his clever yet brutal murder of the Moabite King Eglon, as transmitted in Judg 3:12-30.

use of human sacrifice

The Bible describes how King Mesha of Moab sacrificed his crown prince to avert a military disaster (2 Kings 3:27).

And Moses the servant of the LORD died there in Moab, as the LORD had said. He buried him in Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is. Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak nor his strength gone.

Moab (Hebrew: מוֹאָב — Moʾav; Greek: Μωάβ) is the historical name for a mountainous strip of land in modern-day Jordan running along the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. In ancient times, it was home to the kingdom of the Moabites, a people often in conflict with their Israelite neighbors to the west.

Why is Moab so famous? ›

Moab is famous for being an outdoor mecca. The town is a popular base for exploring national parks, mountain biking, and river rafting.

The Moab Valley is part of the Ute ancestral homeland. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints colonized much of Utah, with faithful missionaries directed to settle in places with water and arable land, regardless of Indigenous inhabitation.

The Indigenous peoples of the Moab Valley and southeastern Utah moved seasonally in search of water, shelter, and other resources required to sustain their communities—until they were forced from their traditional lands upon the arrival of Europeans.

The Book of Ruth relates that Ruth and Orpah, two women of Moab, had married two sons of Elimelech and Naomi, Judeans who had settled in Moab to escape a famine in Judah. The husbands of all three women die; Naomi plans to return to her native Bethlehem and urges her daughters-in-law to return to their families.

Concerned for their father having descendants, one evening, Lot's eldest daughter gets Lot drunk and has sex with him without his knowledge. The following night, the younger daughter does the same. They both become pregnant; the older daughter gives birth to Moab, while the younger daughter gives birth to Ammon.

Moabite, member of a West-Semitic people who lived in the highlands east of the Dead Sea (now in west-central Jordan) and flourished in the 9th century bc. They are known principally through information given in the Old Testament and from the inscription on the Moabite Stone.

Ammon (Ammonite: 𐤏𐤌𐤍 ʻAmān; Hebrew: עַמּוֹן ʻAmmōn; Arabic: عمّون, romanized: ʻAmmūn) was an ancient Semitic-speaking kingdom occupying the east of the Jordan River, between the torrent valleys of Arnon and Jabbok, in present-day Jordan.

A Jew is prohibited from marrying a male Moabite and Ammonite convert (Deuteronomy 23:4); or an Egyptian or Edomite convert up to the third generation from conversion (Deuteronomy 23:8–9). Nethinim/Gibeonites are prohibited by rabbinic injunction.

The Moabites are said to have made bloody sacrifices, both human and animal, in honor of Chemosh along with other gods in the region. This practice was likely influenced by various other Canaanite rites (such as in the worship of Baal and Moloch), which were known to have also included human sacrifice.

Ruth (/ruːθ/; Hebrew: רוּת‎, Modern: Rūt, Tiberian: Rūṯ) is the person after whom the Book of Ruth is named. She was a Moabite woman who married an Israelite.

Where is Sodom and Gomorrah today? ›

The present-day industrial site of Sedom, Israel, on the Dead Sea shore, is located near the presumed site of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Ammonite, any member of an ancient Semitic people whose principal city was Rabbath Ammon, in Palestine. The “sons of Ammon” were in perennial, though sporadic, conflict with the Israelites. After a long period of seminomadic existence, the Ammonites established a kingdom north of Moab in the 13th century bc.

Moab: Bronze and Iron Age kingdom, directly east of the Dead Sea, situated in modern Jordan. The kingdom of Moab was situated between Ammon in the north, Edom in the south, the desert in the east, and the Dead Sea in the west.

Ruth is a Moabite woman who marries a Judean immigrant named Mahlon (1:1–4; 4:10). Upon his death she becomes a childless widow who chooses to accompany her mother-in-law, Naomi, to Judah.

Boaz's decision in accepting to marry Ruth in 4:7-13 underscores hesed, and this has an interface with Ruth's astonishing demonstration of kindness in Ruth 3:9-18 as she requests Boaz to marry her in order to acquire a seed from him for Naomi so that Elimelech's family will not be blotted out.

He stated, “Do not harass Moab, nor provoke them to war.” The verb translated by the NASB as “to harass” basically means “to treat someone as an enemy,” or “to show hostility to someone.” The verb “to provoke” means “to engage in strife with someone.” God used these two verbs together to strengthen His command to His ...

And then verse 42 relates the result of Babylon's coming – utter destruction because of their pride. 42 And Moab shall be destroyed from being a people, because he hath [magnified himself/become arrogant] [against/toward] the LORD.