Koa

Koa appears only once in Scripture, in Ezekiel 23:23, listed alongside Pekod and Shoa as Babylonian and Assyrian peoples who would come against the apostate Jerusalem (symbolized as Oholibah). The name is likely a reference to a specific province, tribe, or people within the Babylonian or eastern Mesopotamian sphere. Some scholars have identified Koa with the Qutu (Gutians), a people from the Zagros mountains east of the Tigris, or with a region known in cuneiform sources as Qa'a or Qawe.

Ezekiel's vision in chapter 23 presents an allegory of two sisters, Oholah (Samaria) and Oholibah (Jerusalem), who prostituted themselves to Assyrian and Babylonian lovers. The enumeration of Koa, Shoa, and Pekod alongside Babylonian and Chaldean warriors represents the broad coalition of eastern peoples that Nebuchadnezzar could marshal against Judah. Koa's obscurity in the biblical record—appearing only in this single prophetic text—reflects its status as a peripheral eastern people known to Ezekiel's Babylonian audience but less familiar in the biblical mainstream.