NOB nŏb (נֹ֖ב, thriving?). A town NE of Jerusalem.

Nob was a “city of priests” (1 Sam 22:19), near Saul’s capital of Gibeah to which the Tabernacle came to be transferred after the destruction of Shiloh (14:2, 3; cf. Jer 7:14; Mark 2:26). At the time of David’s flight from Saul, c. 1015 b.c., the high priest Ahimelech provided him at Nob with showbread and the sword of Goliath (1 Sam 21:1-9), so that Saul subsequently slew eighty-five of the priests and “smote the city with the edge of the sword” (22:11-19). Three centuries later Nob was described as a halting place for the Assyrian, arriving from the NE, from which he could “shake his fist at the mount of Zion” (Isa 10:32; cf. Jerusalem, II, C). It suggests the identification of Nob with Ras Umm et-Tal, or Mount Scopus on the N part of the Olivet ridge (J. Simons, Geographical and Topographical Texts of the OT, 70, 319).

Such a location for Nob is confirmed by 2 Samuel 15, which speaks of David’s coming to the top of the ascent of Olivet “where God was worshiped” (v. 32), and by Nehemiah 11:31, 32, which lists Nob as a Benjamite town between Anathoth and Ananiah (q.v.) (Bethany; ibid., 390).