RABBAH (rab'bah), (Heb. rab-baw', great).
1. This name, which properly denotes a great city or metropolis, is given in Scripture to the the inhabitants expatriated to Media. The Am monities then recovered possession of Rabbah and the other cities and territories which had in for mer times been taken from them by the Israel ites (Jer. xlix :3 ; Ezek. xxv :2-5). (See Am NIONITES.) Some centuries later, when these parts %sere subject to Egypt, Rabbah was restored or rebuilt by Ptolemy Philadelphus, and called by him Philadelphia (Euseb. Onomasl. s. v.), and under this name it is often mentioned by Greek and Roman writers (Min. Hist. Nat. v.16; Ptol. Geog. v .15), by Josephus (De Bell. lad. i .6, 3; i.19, 5; ii.t8, 1), and upon Roman coins (Eckliel, iii .351 ; Mionnet, v.335), as a city of Arabia, Ccelesyria, or Decapolis.
Rabbah appears to have consisted. like Arocr, of two parts ; the city itself, and 'the city of waters,' or royal city, which was probably a de tached portion of the city itself, insulated by the capital of the Ammonites (Josh. xiii :25 ; 2 Sam. Xi :T ; xii :27 ; I Chron. XX :I ; Jer. xlix :3) : the full name of which, however, as given in Deut. iii:t 1, appears to have been Rabbath-beni-Am mon. It was in this place that the great iron bed stead of Og, king of Bashan, was preserved (Deut. iii:tx).
Here also, during the siege of the place by Joab, the unsuspecting Udall was slain, through the contrivance of David. that he might possess himself of his wife Bathsheba ; after which the king went in person and took the city, the im portance of which is shown by the solicitude of the monarch thus to appropriate to himself the glory of its subjugation (2 Sam. xi, xii). After this Rabbah was included in the tribe of Gad. After the separation of the ten tribes, Rabbah, with the whole territory beyond the Jordan. ad hered to the kingdom of Israel, till it was rav aged by the Assyrians under Tiglath-pileser. and stream on which it was situated. The 'city of waters' was taken by Joab; but against the city itself he was obliged to call for the assistance of David with a reinforcement (2 Sam. xii :29).
2. A city of Judah, named with Kirjatli-jearim (Josh. xv :6o only), but location entirely un thought by some (McC. and S.. Cyc.) to be an epithet for Jerusalem itself.
3. In Josh. xi :8, only, Zidon is mentioned with the affix Rabbah (see A. V. margin), but ren dered in the text "great Zidon."