Where was Moab?

Question

Where was Moab?

Accepted Answer

Moab was the high tableland east of the Dead Sea, in today's central Jordan, from the gorge of the Zered (Wadi Hasa) in the south to the plains opposite Jericho in the north, cut in two by the deep canyon of the Arnon (Wadi Mujib). The map point stands on Kir-hareseth, today's Kerak, its chief city south of the Arnon, about 80 km south-east of Jerusalem in a straight line across the Dead Sea. Numbers calls the Arnon “the border of Moab, between Moab and the Amorites”: the land north of it, with Dibon, Medeba and Heshbon, changed hands between Moab and Israel more than once. Most of the Bible's stories of Moab happen on its edges. Israel's last camp before the crossing was “in the plains of Moab on this side Jordan by Jericho”, and Moses died “in the land of Moab” on Mount Nebo, about 65 km north of the map point; “no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day”. In the days of the judges a man of Bethlehem went “to sojourn in the country of Moab” with his wife Naomi, and Ruth the Moabitess came back with her; the Moab plateau can be seen across the Dead Sea from the hills of Judah. In the ninth century BC “Mesha king of Moab was a sheepmaster”, who paid Israel tribute in lambs and wool and then rebelled; his own stele, found at Dibon in 1868 and now in the Louvre, tells how he took back the north of the land. Moab faded as a kingdom after the Babylonian conquests of the sixth century BC; the plateau passed to the Nabataeans and in AD 106 to the Roman province of Arabia, and today it is the governorates of Madaba and Karak.