Moab

Moab[a] (/ˈmoʊæb/) is the historical name for a mountainous tract of land in Jordan. The land lies alongside much of the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. The existence of the Kingdom of Moab is attested to by numerous archaeological findings, most notably the Mesha Stele, which describes the Moabite victory over an unnamed son of King Omri of Israel.[1] The Moabite capital was Dibon. According to the Hebrew Bible, Moab was often in conflict with its Israelite neighbours to the west.

The etymology of the word Moab is uncertain. The earliest gloss is found in the Koine Greek Septuagint[2] which explains the name, in obvious allusion to the account of Moab’s parentage, as ἐκ τοῦ πατρός μου (“from my father”). 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)”.[citation needed] 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 did not command the israelites to refrain from inflicting pain upon the Moabites in the manner in which he did with regard to the Ammonites. Fritz Hommel regards Moab as an abbreviation of Immo-ab = “his mother is his father”.[3]