Jordan - Moab

(Photo taken atop Masada looking eastward across the southern end of the Dead Sea)

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The Moabites were neighbors of ancient Israel. The lived on the east side of the Dead Sea in what is today The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Ruth is possibly the most famous Moabite in the Bible. She stood by her Mother-in-law, Naomi, with the famous line, “Anywhere you go, I will go … your people will be my people, and your God, my God” (Ruth 1:16).

Ruth is among the ancestors of David and part of the lineage of the Messiah. However, most readers take a rather negative view of the Moabites. The Old Testament speaks of them often in very negative terms. For example, one of their gods, Kemosh, is labeled as “filth” (from the Hebrew shiqqutz) in 1st Kings 11:7.

The Bible describes the beginning of the Moabites in Genesis 19. They owe their name to the incestuous offspring of Lot and his eldest daughter after fleeing from Sodom and Gomorrah. Each of his two daughters gave him wine until he was drunk, and each seduced him. The sons born to those encounters were named Moab and Ammon (the Moabites and Ammonites), who became life-long enemies of Israel.