Other names are Kiriath-Ba'al, Ba'alah and Ba'ale-Judah, which implies the city was affiliated with Baal worship at an earlier date.
History
says that Kiryat Ye'arim was located about 9 Roman miles, or about 15 km, from Jerusalem. Some have identified it with the ruin now known as Khirbet 'Erma, southwest of the town of Abu Ghosh,, based on phonetic similarity and proximity to Beit Shemesh. However, starting with Edward Robinson, biblical Kiriath-Jearim is more often identified with Deir el-Azar, which is nearer Abu Ghosh on a hill where the Deir El-Azar Monastery currently stands, about 7 miles west of Jerusalem. This site was the only major biblical site in ancient Judah that had not been excavated, until an excavation began in 2017 by a team from Tel Aviv University and the Collège de France. Kiriath-Jearim was described as a Hivite city linked to the Gibeonites. It was a key landmark in identifying the border between the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. It is mentioned as the place the Ark of the Covenant may have been moved after being in Beth Shemesh. About 60 years afterward, the ark was moved to Jerusalem and placed in a tent outside the palace of David. Kiriath-Jearim's change in designation from Kiriath-Ba'al betrays the population change that took place after Joshua's military campaign to take possession of the land from its previous inhabitants. The religious basis for the war is revealed in the city's renaming; the name Baal belonged to a pagan deity and, according to the Bible, the God of Israel ordered Joshua and the Israelites to erase the memory of the Ba'al cult. However, the name change does not reflect the Yahwist religious affiliation of the city's conquerors. Rather, it reflects salient geographical features. The Scriptures identify at least one prophet of God who came from this town. Uriah the son of Shemaiah was from Kiriath-Jearim, a contemporary of Jeremiah who prophesied against Jerusalem. This aroused the wrath of King Jehoiakim who sought to put Uriah to death. Uriah escaped to Egypt, where he was apprehended by the king's henchman and extradited to Jerusalem for execution and burial in an unmarked grave. The writer of Chronicles teaches that Shobal was "the father of Kiriath-Jearim", possibly in the sense of being the founder of this town. Descendants of Kiriath-Jearim were among the Jewish exiles who returned to Judea with Zerubbabel.
