MOLADAH birth MoAa8a, IiaAaSd ; Alex. MActaci ; McAaSa ; Molada), a city grouped with Kedesh, Beersheba, and others, which were situated on the extreme south of Judah, near the borders of Edom (Josh. xv. 21-26). It was afterwards assigned with Beersheba to the tribe of Simeon (xix. 2), and was occupied by the family of Shimei Chron. iv. 28). It is not again men tioned until after the captivity, when some of the returned captives of Judah settled in it (Neh. xi. 26). Reland suggests that this city is identical with Malatha, one of the places to which Herod Agrippa retired during his disgrace at the Roman court (Reland, Pal., pp. 885, got ; Joseph. Antiq. xviii. 6. 2). Malatha is said to have been in Idu mea, but in the time of Josephus Idumea included a large section of southern Palestine [Inuteux]. In the 4th century Malatba (MaNd5-a) was one of the most important cities in southern Palestine, and is frequently mentioned by Eusebius and Je rome in describing the situation of other towns (Onomart., s. v. /froth, Ether, Tether, etc. ; cf.
Reland, S85). According to tnese authors it was situated about twenty miles south of Hebron (Cel larius, Geogr., ii. 59o). At a still later period Malatha became a Roman military station (Reland, p. 231).
About twenty geographical miles south of He bron, on the leading road to Aila on the Red Sea, and ten miles east of Beersheba, are the ruins of an ancient fortified town, now called which Robinson rightly identifies with the Roman Malatha, and Jewish .111oladah (B. R. ii. 200, sty.) The place is now deserted, and the houses and walls are prostrate ; but there are two ancient wells which attract the Bedawin, and make el-Milh a favourite watering-place. The name Milh, which in Arabic signifies salt,' is doubtless a corruption of the Greek Mak9 or MaXdb- (Robinson, ii. 201, note ; Van de Velde, Memoir, 335 ; Ritter, Pal. and Syr., i. 124; Handbk. p. 64).—J. L. P.