Moab

Moab designates both the ancestor of the Moabite people and the land they inhabited on the high plateau east of the Dead Sea. The nation's origins are traced to a morally compromised beginning: Moab was the son born to Lot by his elder daughter after the destruction of Sodom, the name interpreted in the text as from my father (Genesis 19:37). From him descended a people closely related to Israel yet often at enmity with them — a tension that runs through the whole biblical story of Moab.

The land of Moab lay east of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, a fertile tableland famed for its flocks; King Mesha of Moab is described as a sheep breeder who paid Israel a tribute of lambs and wool (2 Kings 3:4). Its northern border shifted around the Arnon gorge, with Edom to the south and Ammon to the northeast. Because of the kinship through Lot, Israel was forbidden in the wilderness to harass Moab or take its land (Deuteronomy 2:9). Yet on the plains of Moab, opposite Jericho, much of Israel's later wilderness narrative unfolds: there Balak king of Moab hired the prophet Balaam to curse Israel, only to have the curses turned to blessing (Numbers 22:3–6); there Israel fell into idolatry and immorality with the daughters of Moab at Baal-peor (Numbers 25:1–3); and there, on the plains of Moab, Moses delivered the addresses of Deuteronomy, viewed the Promised Land from Mount Nebo, and died (Deuteronomy 34:5–6).

Relations remained hostile through the era of the judges and kings. Moab oppressed Israel under Eglon until Ehud delivered them (Judges 3:12–30); David subdued Moab (2 Samuel 8:2); and after Ahab's death Mesha rebelled, the campaign recorded both in Scripture and on the Moabite Stone. Because of Moab's hostility and pride, the prophets pronounced sweeping oracles of judgment against it (Isaiah 15:1; the long lament of Jeremiah 48), and a Moabite was barred from the assembly of the LORD to the tenth generation (Deuteronomy 23:3).

Against this dark backdrop shines the book of Ruth. A Moabite widow clings to her Israelite mother-in-law with the great confession, "Your people shall be my people, and your God my God" (Ruth 1:16), marries Boaz, and becomes the great-grandmother of King David (Ruth 4:17) — and so an ancestress of the Messiah, named in the genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1:5). Moab thus stands as a sign both of judgment on the proud and of the wideness of God's mercy, which gathers even an outsider people into the line of redemption.