Baalah

Baalah (meaning mistress or city) is a place-name applied to several distinct sites in the Old Testament. The most significant is Baalah of Judah, also called Kirjath-jearim (city of forests) and Kirjath-baal — the town where the ark of the covenant rested for twenty years after its return from the Philistines, until David brought it to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6:2; 1 Chronicles 13:6). A second Baalah was a town in the south of Judah (Joshua 15:29), identified with Bilhah in 1 Chronicles 4:29. A third was a mountain on the border of Judah (Joshua 15:11).

The name's root — the feminine form of Baal — suggests these sites had at some point been associated with Canaanite religious practice, though their later Israelite usage was entirely dissociated from any divine name. The ark's long sojourn at Kirjath-baal/Baalah of Judah is the theologically significant association, making this village the custodian of Israel's most sacred object through the turbulent years of Saul's reign.