Ten-itied is Ramah, Gibealh of Saul flees.
Shriek with thy voice, daughter of Gallim ;
Listen, O Laish ! Ah, poor Auathoth !
Madnienah escapes, dwellers in Gebim take flight.
Yet this day he halts at Nob :
He shakes his hand against the mount, daughter of Zion,
The hill of Jerusalem." In this spirited sketch the poet sees the enemy pouring down from the north ; they reach at length the neigh- borhood of the devoted city; they take possession of one village after another; while the inhabitants flee at their approach, and fill the country with cries of terror and distress. It is implied here clearly that Nob was the last station in their line of march, whence the in- vaders could see Jerusalem, and Avhence they could be seen, as they "shook the hand" in proud derision of their enemies. Lightfoot also mentions a Jewish tradi- tion {Opji. ii, 203) "that Jerusalem and Nob stood with- in sight of each other. It was occupied after the cap- tivity by Benjamin, and is grouped with Anathoth (Neh. xi, 32).
Eusebius and Jerome strangely confound Nob with Nobah, a city in the east of Bashan {Onomast. s. v. Nab- be) ; though Jerome in another place {Epitaph, Paula,
NOBAH
150 NOBIS QUOQUE PECCATORIBUS
Opera, i, 606, ed. IMigne) locates the town on the plain of Sharon, somewhere between Antipatris and Nicopolis, a theorj^ which is almost as wild as the former. He doubtless refers to the present Noha (see Von IJaiimer's Pulasfina, p. 196). No allusion is made to this latter place in the Bible. The Jews, after recoverinj::: the ark of Jehovah from the Philistines, would be likely to keep it beyond the reach of a similar disaster; and the Nob which was the seat of the sanctuary in the time of Saul must have been among the mountains. The name of Nob has long since disappeared, and its site has been unknown for iwrhajis two thousand years. Kiepert and others would identify Nob with the little village of Isaiviych, situated to the right of the road which leads from Jerusalem to Anathoth. Tobler (Topographie von Jems, ii, § 719) describes this vil- lage as beautifully situated, and occupying unquestion- ably an ancient site. But Isawiyeh is in a deep glen, hidden from the Holy City by the ridge of Olivet, where- as Nob was in sight of Jerusalem (Van de Velde, 3Ie- moir, p. 337). Eobiuson thought Nob must have stood somewhere on the ridge of Olivet or Scopus, and there he searched, but in vain, for ?my trace of an ancient site {Bib. Res. i, 4G4). Less than a mile south of Tuleil el-Fiil, the site of Gibeah, is a conical rocky tell, called es-Sumah (Warren, in Quar. Statement of the '"Pal. Explor. Fund," Oct. 1867), separated from the former by a valley. On the summit and sides of this tell are traces of a small but very ancient town — cisterns cut in the rock: large hewn stones; portions of the rocky sides levelled and hewn away; and on the south-east the remains of a small tower. From the summit there is a wide view. Mount Zion is distinctly seen, though Moriah is hid by an intervening ridge. The position, south of Gibeah, and not far from Anathoth ; the ele- vation, commanding a view of Zion, against which Isaiah represents the Assyrian as "shaking his hand;" the ancient remains — all seem to indicate that this is the site of the long-lost Nob (Porter, Hand-book; p. 324). — Kitto ; Smith. Lieutenant Conder ingenioush' argues {Quar. Statement of the " Palestine Explor. Fund," Jan. 1875, p. 34 sq.) that Nob is identical with Mizpeh, and both with the modern Neby Sanuvil.
No'bah (Heb. Ko'bach,n'Zb, a bashinr/, or [as Fi'irst suggests] pre-eminence ; Sept. Nft/SaD, l^ajSci, v. r. Na- j3w^, Na/St^), the name of a man and also of a place.
1. An Israelitish warrior (Numb, xxxii, 42 only), probably, like Jair, a Manassite, who during the con- quest of the territory on the east of Jordan possessed himself of the town of Kenath and the villages or ham- lets dependent upon it (Heb. " daughters"), and gave them his own name. B.C. cir. 1G17. According to the Jewish tradition {Seder Olam Rubba, ix), Nobah was born in Egypt, died after the decease of Moses, and was buried during the passage of the Jordan (Smith).
2. The name conferred by the above-mentioned con- queror of Kenath and its dependent villages on his new acquisition (Numb, xxxii, 42). It is most prob- ably the same place which is mentioned in the book of Judges (viii, 11) in describing Gideon's pursuit of the princes of Jlidian : " And (jideon went up by the way of them that dwell in tents, on the east of Nobah and Jogliehah, and smote the host : for the host was secure." If this be so, then Gideon must have followed the Mid- ianites into the great plain east of Jebel Hauran. The remarks of Eusebius and Jerome on this name are very confused. In one piace {Onomast. s. v. Nabbe) they con- found it with the sacerdotal city Nob ; while in another they seem at least to confound it with Nebo of Moab (s. v. Nabo ), and locate it eight miles south of Heshbon. Both these views are entirely opposed to the topography of the sacred writers. That Nobah was the name given to the ancient Kenath cannot be doubted ; the new name. however, did not survive the Israelitish rule in that region. It appears never to have superseded the old among the aborigines, and on the retirement of the Is-