RAMOTH
RAMOTH identical in signification with Râm and Ramah, equivalent in Hebrew to an eminence, and hence a generic name for towns situated on remarkable heights, as so many in Palestine were. Besides those above named [RAMAH; RAMATHA] was a Ramah in the tribe of Asher, not far from Tyre; and another in Naphthali (Josh. 19.29, 36) in the north; and a Ramath in the tribe of Simeon, appropriately called “Ramath of the South” (ver. 8.), to which David sent a share of the spoils of Ziklag (1 Sam. 30.27), and yet a Ramoth in Issachar, assigned to the Levites of the family of Gershom. (1 Chron. 6.74.) More important than the foregoing was--RAMOTH-GILEAD (Ῥαμὼθ ἐν Γαγαάδ), a city of the tribe of Gad, assigned as a city of refuge, first by Moses and subsequently by Joshua. (Deut. 4.43; Josh. 20.8, Ἀρημώθ.) It was also a Levitical city of the family of Merari. (Josh. 21.38.) The Syrians took it from Ahab, who lost his life in seeking to recover it. (1 Kings, xxii.) Eusebius places it 15 miles west of Philadelphia (Onomast. s. v., where S. Jerome erroneously reads east; Reland, p. 966), in the Peraea, near the river Jabok. Its site is uncertain, and has not been recovered in modern times.
[G.W]