The nation and high plateau east of the Dead Sea, descended from MOAB, son of LOT by his elder daughter (Genesis 19:37). Israel's perennial neighbour and frequent enemy: Moab hired Balaam to curse Israel (Numbers 22-24), and Deuteronomy 23:3 bars Moabites from 'the assembly of Jehovah, even to the tenth generation.' Yet it is to the fields of Moab that Elimelech's family flees the famine, and out of Moab comes RUTH, whose loyalty out-does Israel's own. The book quietly holds the ban and the Moabite heroine in the same hand.