AR, AR OF MOAB

ar, mo'-ab (`ar, `ar-mo'abh; Er; Aroer or Seeir): The city of Ar is named in a snatch of ancient song (Numbers 21:15), literally "the site of Ar." It is identical with "Ar of Moab" (Numbers 21:28; Isaiah 15:1). This is probably the place called the City of Moab in Numbers 22:36, where the Hebrew is `ir mo'abh. It is probably also intended by "the city that is in the middle of the valley" (Deuteronomy 2:36; Joshua 13:9,16; 2 Samuel 24:5). It lay "on the border of the Arnon, which is in the utmost part of the border" (Numbers 22:36). A possible identification might be the ruin noted by Burckhardt, in the floor of the valley, on a piece of pasture-land below the confluence of the Lejjun and the Mojib. Buhl however thinks that not a city but a Moabite district somewhere in the region south of the Arnon may be intended (GAP, 269).

W. Ewing

From the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Edited by James Orr, published in 1939 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.