2. Rehoboth the City (Heb. Rechoboth' 'I?; rOTTl T'S, i. e. Rehoboth City ; Sept. 'Pow/SwS' izo\iq v. r. 'Potujiwc; Yulg.platea; ciritatcs), one of the four cit- ies built by Asshur, or by Nimrod in Asshur, according as this difficult passage is translated. The four were Nineveh, Rehoboth-ir, Calah, and Resen, between Nine- veh and Calah (Gen. x, 11). It has been supposed by recent commentators that these four constituted one (jreat city. They argue that the tirst name. Nim n //. is the chief, and that the other three are subordinate. "He built Nineveh, with (taking 1, not as a copulative, but as the sign of subordination) Rehoboth-ir, Calah. and Resen, between Nineveh and Calah." From this it ■would follow that the four places formed a large com- posite city, or range of towns, to which the general name " Nineveh" was given (see Keil and Delitzsch, ad foe). This appears to put too great a strain upon the passage; and it is better, because more natural, to take them as distinct places. They were most prob-
ably not far distant from each other; and as Nineveh and Calah stood on the Tigris, the others may be looked for there also. The Samaritan seems to understand Sittace in South Assyria, which was thence called Sit- tacene ( Ptolemy, vi, 1,2), and is different from the Mesopotamian Sittace near the Tigris (Xenoph. A nab. ii, 4, 13; corap. Mannert, Geogr. v. ii, 383 sq.), on the site of the modern Old Bagdad. Ephrem has Adiabene, a well-known district of Assyria; but not. as Miehaelis supposes (Spicil. i, 243), also a city. Schulthess (Parad. p. 117) refers it to the Euphrates, and considers it the" same as Rehoboth Ilan-nahar (No. 3, below). In that case we must understand Assyria in a wide sense, as the Assyrian empire, which is improbable. Bochart gives a far-fetched supposition, resting on conjectural etymology (Phaleg, iv, 21 ). Jerome, both in the Vul- gate and in his Qua'stiones ad Genesim (probably from Jewish sources), considers Rehoboth-ir as referring to Nineveh, and as meaning the "streets of the city." The readings of the Targums of Jonathan, Jerusalem, and rabbi Joseph on Gen. and 1 Chron., viz. Platiah, Platiutha, are probably only transcriptions of the Greek word TvXaruat, which, as found in the well-known an- cient city Plataea, is the exact equivalent of Rehoboth. The name of Rahabeh is still attached to two places in the region of the ancient Mesopotamia. They lie, the one on the western and the other on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, a few miles below the confluence of the Khabur. Both are said to contain extensive an- cient remains. That on the eastern bank bears the affix of malik, or royal, and this Bunsen (Bibelwerfc) and Kalisch (Genesis, p. 2G1) propose as the representa- tive of Rehoboth. Its distance from Kalah-Sherghat and Nimrud (nearly 200 miles) is perhaps an obstacle to this identification. Sir H. Rawlinson ( A thenasum, April 15, 1854) suggests Selemiyah in the immediate neighborhood of Kalah, "where there are still exten- sive ruins of the Assyrian period," but no subsequent discoveries appear to have confirmed this suggestion.
3. Rehoboth by the River (Heb. Rechoboth' han- Nahar', nnsn rVQh'l, i.e. Rechoboth of the Rirer ; Sept. 'Pow/Sirjj' [v. r. 'P<i>/3iu3 ] >) Trapd Tvurapov ; Yulg. de Jluvio Roboth, or Rohohoth, aim juxta amnem sita est), the city of a certain Said or Shaul, one of the early kings of the Edomites (Gen. xxxvi, 37; 1 Chron. i, 48). The affix " the river" fixes the situation of Re- hoboth as on the Euphrates, emphatically "the river" to the inhabitants of Western Asia (see Gen. xxxi, 21; xv, 18; Deut. i, 7; Exod. xxiii, 31). The Targum of Onkelos adds, "Rehoboth, which is on the Phrat.'" There is no reason to suppose that the limits of Edom ever extended to the Euphrates, and therefore the occur- rence of the name in the lists of kings of Edom is pos- sibly a trace of an Assyrian incursion of the same nature as that of Chedorlaomer and Amraphel. At all events, the kings of Edom were not all natives of that country. Schultens in his note (Index Geogr. in Yit. Salad, s. v. "Rahaba") identifies it with Rehoboth of Gen. xxxvi, 37 ; and this is the view of Bochart (Opp. i, 225), Winer, Gesenius (Thesaur. p. 1281), and others ; but as the Eu- phrates was far distant from the site of Nineveh, there is a strong probability against this opinion. Rahabah is mentioned by Abulfeda. In his day there was a small village on the site. The name still remains at- tached to two spots on the Euphrates— the one, simply Rahabeh, on the right bank, eight miles below the junc- tion of the Khabur, and about three miles west of the river; the other four or five miles farther down on the left bank. The latter is said to be called Pahabeh- malih, i.e. "royal" (Kalisch, Kaplan), and is on this ground identified by the Jewish commentators with the city of Saul. The existence of the second locality, however, rests but<on slender foundation. It is shown on the map in Layard's Nineveh ami Babylon, and is mentioned by the two Jewish authorities named above; but it does not appear on the map of colonel Chesney.
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