Moab and Moabites

Moabites is the term for the inhabitants of the land of Moab. Their territory lay between the Rivers Arnon and Zered, in the west of present-day Jordan. They were closely related to the Israelites. Their language differed little from Hebrew and their conception of their tribal god Chemosh, is in some regards reminiscent of ancient Israelite religion.
Though they were brother peoples, the Moabites regularly came into conflict with the Israelites. That is why they have a poor reputation in the Bible. Genesis 19:30-38 tells us that their ancestor Moab was conceived by Lot with one of his daughters.

The name “Moab” first occurs in Egyptian texts from the time of Pharaoh Ramses II. When, around 1200 BC, the Sea Peoples completely wrecked the unsteady balance in western Asia, the Moabites saw their chance to keep an area under their permanent control and found a kingdom.

The Moabites wanted to extend their land northwards. This brought them into conflict with the Israelites, who regarded part of the area north of the Arnon as their inheritance. The depth of the hatred between the two peoples is apparent from the many prophecies against Moab that we read about in the Old Testament (Isaiah 15–16; Isaiah 25:10-12; Jeremiah 48:1-47; Ezekiel 25:8-11; Amos 2:1-3; Zephaniah 2:8-11). It is also apparent from the prohibition against accepting Moabites into God’s community (Deuteronomy 23:3; Nehemiah 13:1), even though King David came from a partly Moabite background (Ruth 4:22).

In 732 BC, the Assyrian King Tiglath Pileser III made Moab a vassal state. After the fall of the Assyrian Empire, Moab became a tributary of Babylonia. In 582 BC it was annexed by the Neo-Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II. The Moabites continued to exist as a people in the Persian period as well (see Ezra 9:1; Nehemiah 13:1; Nehemiah 13:23), but the area became steadily more Arabised. In AD 106 the area of the Moabites was incorporated into the Roman province of Arabia. This brought a definitive end to Moab.