town or village

Nebo

• Today Khirbet al Mukhayyat
• Location disputed

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History

Nebo was a town of Moab on the plateau north of the Arnon, near the mountain of the same name from which Moses saw the land; the mountain is a separate place on the map. When the tribes of Reuben and Gad asked for the land east of Jordan they named Nebo among its towns, with Heshbon, Elealeh and Baal-meon, and Reuben rebuilt it, “their names being changed”, perhaps because Nebo was also the name of a Babylonian god. Israel's last camp before the plains of Moab was “in the mountains of Abarim, before Nebo”. The Reubenite Bela “dwelt in Aroer, even unto Nebo and Baal-meon”.

Mesha, king of Moab, tells the rest on his stele: Chemosh said to him, “Go, take Nebo from Israel”; he went by night, fought from daybreak until noon, took the town, killed its seven thousand people as a devotion to Ashtar-Chemosh, and carried the vessels of Yahweh before Chemosh. So in Isaiah's day Nebo was Moabite again, and “Moab shall howl over Nebo, and over Medeba”; Jeremiah's oracle on Moab opens “Woe unto Nebo! for it is spoiled”, and names it again with Dibon and Beth-diblathaim.

Two sites in the hills around Mount Nebo claim the town. Khirbet el-Mukhayyat, on a spur 3 km south-east of the summit, has Iron Age sherds and tombs and the Byzantine village with the churches of Saints Lot and Procopius, of Amos and Casiseus and of Saint George, whose mosaics the Franciscans uncovered from the 1930s; Sylvester Saller and Bellarmino Bagatti published it as “the town of Nebo”. Khirbet Ayun Musa, by the springs of Moses in the valley to the north, is the other candidate; Egeria in 384 was shown the springs and climbed from them to the church on the summit. The Nebo that Eusebius knew as a deserted place near Heshbon is probably Mukhayyat.

Today both lie in the Madaba governorate of Jordan, a few kilometres from the Memorial of Moses on Siyagha, and the mosaics of Mukhayyat are open to visitors.

Scripture: Num 32:3; Num 32:37–38; Num 33:47; 1 Chr 5:8; Isa 15:2; Jer 48:1; Jer 48:22

Checked against its sources; not yet read by a historian.

Verses (7)

Num 32:3

Ataroth, and Dibon, and Jazer, and Nimrah, and Heshbon, and Elealeh, and Shebam, and Nebo, and Beon,

Num 32:38

And Nebo, and Baal-meon, (their names being changed,) and Shibmah: and gave other names unto the cities which they builded.

Num 33:47

And they removed from Almon-diblathaim, and pitched in the mountains of Abarim, before Nebo.

1 Chr 5:8

And Bela the son of Azaz, the son of Shema, the son of Joel, who dwelt in Aroer, even unto Nebo and Baal-meon:

Isa 15:2

He is gone up to Bajith, and to Dibon, the high places, to weep: Moab shall howl over Nebo, and over Medeba: on all their heads shall be baldness, and every beard cut off.

Jer 48:1

Against Moab thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Woe unto Nebo! for it is spoiled: Kiriathaim is confounded and taken: Misgab is confounded and dismayed.

Jer 48:22

And upon Dibon, and upon Nebo, and upon Beth-diblathaim,

King James Version