city of Moab
city of Moab is an ancient city mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Transjordan in modern-day Israel. Known today as Misna. It appears across 1 verse in Scripture.
Biblical History
The City of Moab is mentioned once in Numbers 22:36, where it denotes a settlement on the Moabite border at the Arnon River. When the Moabite king Balak heard that Balaam was approaching, he went to meet the prophet at this frontier city: "Balak went out to meet him at the city of Moab, which is on the Arnon border, at the farthest point of the boundary." The episode is part of the extended Balaam narrative in Numbers 22-24, in which Balak hired the foreign seer Balaam to curse Israel but found that God compelled Balaam to bless Israel instead. The location of this border city at the Arnon emphasizes Balak's anxious concern to intercept the prophet at the very edge of his territory. The Arnon Gorge formed the traditional northern boundary of Moab, and a city at this frontier would have served both administrative and military functions for the Moabite kingdom throughout its history.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
The City of Moab is associated with the region near the Arnon River (modern Wadi Mujib) in present-day Jordan, one of the most dramatic gorges in the Middle East. The specific site is tentatively identified with Misna or a nearby location along the Arnon plateau. The Transjordanian highlands have been surveyed extensively, particularly by Nelson Glueck in the early twentieth century and by subsequent Jordanian and international teams. The Arnon region shows evidence of substantial occupation during the Middle Bronze Age, Iron Age I and II, and later periods, consistent with the Moabite kingdom that flourished in the Iron Age. The Mesha Stele, discovered at Dhiban in 1868 and now in the Louvre, provides detailed contemporary evidence for Moabite geography and history in the ninth century BC.
Verse Appearances (1)
Num
References
- Orr, J. (ed.) (1915) The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Chicago: Howard-Severance Company. [Public Domain]
- OpenBible.info (n.d.) Bible Geocoding. Available at: https://www.openbible.info/geo/. [CC BY 4.0]
- Bagnall, R. et al. (eds.) (n.d.) Pleiades: A Gazetteer of Past Places. Available at: https://pleiades.stoa.org. [CC BY 3.0]
- Wikidata contributors (n.d.) Wikidata. Available at: https://www.wikidata.org. [CC0]
- Lawrence, D. et al. (2025) Villages to Empires: a settlement dataset for the Southern Levant. doi:10.5281/zenodo.15111732. [CC BY 4.0]
- Church of England (1769) The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version. [Public Domain]