Bamoth-baal

Bamoth-baal ("high places of Baal") was the elevated cultic site in Moab where Balak king of Moab took the prophet Balaam to look down on the Israelite encampment "so that he might see the nearest of the people" he had been hired to curse (Numbers 22:41). From this vantage point Balaam pronounced not a curse but the first of his four oracles of blessing on Israel. The site lay on the Abarim ridge in central Moab near Mount Nebo and is generally identified with the elevation at Khirbet el-Quweijiyeh, providing a panoramic view westward across the Jordan Valley to the plains where Israel was camped. Reuben later inherited Bamoth-baal as part of its Transjordan territory (Joshua 13:17). Most scholars consider it the same as Bamoth on Israel's own wilderness itinerary (Numbers 21:19-20) just before they themselves had arrived in the same region.