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( Moab)
Moab (Hebrew ??????, Standard&_160;Mo?av Tiberian&_160;Mô?a?&_160;; Greek ???ß&_160;; Arabic ????, Assyrian Mu'aba, Ma'ba, Ma'ab&_160;; Egyptian Mu'ab) 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. The Moabites were a historical people, whose existence is attested to by numerous archeological findings, most notably the Mesha Stele, which describes the Moabite victory over an unnamed son of King Omri of Israel.[1] Their capital was Dibon, located next to the modern Jordanian town of Dhiban. The etymology of the word is uncertain. The earliest gloss is found in the Septuagint[2] which explains the name, in obvious allusion to the account of Moab's parentage, as ?? t?? pat??? µ??. Other etymologies which have been proposed regard it as a corruption of "seed of a father," or as a participial form from "to desire," thus connoting "the desirable (land)." Rashi explains the word Mo'ab to mean "from the father", since "ab" in Hebrew and Arabic and the rest of the semitic languages means father. He writes that as a result of the immodesty of Moab's name, God didn't command the Jews to refrain from inflicting pain upon the Moabites in the manner in which He did with regards to the Ammonites. Fritz Hommel[3] regards "Moab" as an abbreviation of "Immo-ab" = "his mother is his father." Moab occupied a plateau about 3,000&_160;feet (910&_160;m) above the level of the Mediterranean, or 4,300&_160;feet (1,300&_160;m) above the Dead Sea, and rising gradually from north to south. It was bounded on the west by the Dead Sea and the southern section of the Jordan River; on the east by Ammon and the Arabian desert, from which it was separated by low, rolling hills; and on the south by Edom. The northern boundary varied, but in general it may be said to have been represented by a line drawn some miles above the northern extremity of the Dead Sea.
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