_Moab._--The country south of Gilead was given to the tribe of Reuben. It was the land of the Moabites, and a land where Moabite kings continued to reign, notwithstanding the rights of Reuben. From this land came Ruth, to dwell at Bethlehem with Naomi, to marry Boaz, and be held in memory by-and-bye as the ancestress of David. Perhaps it was on account of Ruth that David found the king of Moab willing to give safe asylum to his aged parents, while he himself braved the dangers of the outlaw’s life (1 Sam. xxii. 3). Yet the time came when David fought against the Moabites and conquered them, treating the captives with a severity which makes us suspect that there had been some act of perfidy or insult. It has been conjectured that the king of Moab betrayed the trust which David reposed in him, and either killed Jesse and his wife or surrendered them to Saul. We do not know. The strong fortress of Moab was Kir-Haraseth, or Kir-Hareseth, or Kir-Heres (2 Kings iii. 25; Isaiah xvi. 7, 11); and it was on the walls of this city that King Mesha offered his son for a burnt-offering, and by the moral effect thus produced turned the tide of battle. We have reasonable ground for identifying Kir-Heres with the modern _Kerak_, near the south-eastern part of the Dead Sea. The allied armies marched round the southern end of the Dead Sea to reach it, instead of crossing the Jordan. “No chain of evidence,” says Dr Tristram, “can be less open to cavil than that which identifies Kerak with Kir-Moab (Isaiah xv. 1) or Kir-Hareseth. It was the castle ‘Kir,’ as distinguished from the metropolis ‘Ar’ of the country, _i.e._, Rabbath Moab, the modern _Rabba_.” The Targum translates the name as “Kerakah.” The Crusaders mistook it for Petra, and gave to its bishop that title, which the Greek Church has still retained, but the name in the vernacular has continued unchanged. No wonder, as we look down from the neighbouring heights upon it, that the combined armies of Israel, Judah, and Edom could not take it, and that “in Kir-Haraseth left they the stones thereof; howbeit the archers went about it and smote it,” but to no purpose. The position is so strong by nature that it would be seized upon as a fortress from the very earliest times. The platform on which the city is built is on a lofty brow, which pushes out like a peninsula and is only connected with other ground by a narrow neck. Two deep _wadies_ flank it north and south, with steeply scarped or else rugged sides. There have been originally only two entrances to Kerak, and both of them through tunnels in the side of the cliff, emerging on the platform of the town.