Moladah

Moladah ("birth") was a town in the Negev, allotted at the conquest first to Judah and then to the tribe of Simeon, which lived as an enclave within Judah's larger territory (Joshua 15:26, 19:2, 1 Chronicles 4:28). Like most Negev towns, Moladah was a hard frontier settlement on the desert edge. Centuries later, after the Babylonian exile, returnees under Zerubbabel resettled the Negev, and Nehemiah's census lists Moladah as one of the southernmost villages of restored Judah: "they lived in Beersheba, Moladah, Beth-pelet, Hazar-shual, in Beersheba and its villages, in Ziklag, in Meconah and its villages" (Nehemiah 11:25-26). Generally identified with Khirbet el-Wateh or Tell el-Milh in the eastern Negev between Beersheba and the Arabah.