Ne'bo, Mount. (prophet). The mountain from which Moses took his first and last view of the Promised Land. Deu_32:41; Deu_34:1. It is described as in the land of Moab, facing Jericho; the head or summit of a mountain called Pisgah, which again seems to have formed a portion of the general range of Abarim.
(Notwithstanding, the minuteness of this description, it is only recently that any one has succeeded in pointing out, any spot which answers to Nebo. Tristram identifies it with a peak, (Jebel Nebbah), of the Abarim or Moab mountains, about three miles southwest of Heshban (Heshbon) and about a mile and a half due west of Baal-meon.
"It overlooks the mouth of the Jordan, over against Jericho," Deu_34:1, and the gentle slopes of its sides may well answer to the "field of Zophim." Num_23:14. Jebel Nebbah is 2683 feet high. It is not an isolated peak, but one of a succession of bare turf-clad eminences, so linked together that the depressions between them were mere hollows, rather than valleys. It commands a wide prospect.
Professor Paine, of the American Exploration Society, contends that Jebel Nebbah, the highest point of the range, is Mount Nebo, that Jebel Siaghah, the extreme headland of the hill, is Mount Pisgah, and that "the mountains of Abarim, "are the cliffs west of these points, and descending toward the Dead Sea. Probably, the whole mountain or range was called, sometimes, by the name of one peak and, sometimes, by that of another, as is frequently the case with mountains now. Editor).
Smith's Bible Dictionary
By Dr. William Smith.Published in 1863
Nebo, Mount
This vicinity is included in the reduced Map of the Ordnance Survey east of the Jordan, and is described by Lieut. Conder in the Quar. Statement of the "Pal. Explor. Fund," October 1881, page 275 sq. It was also visited by Dr. Merrill, and his investigations (East of the Jordan, page 241 sq.) confirm the views expressed by us under the art. PISGAH. Tristram remarks (Bible Places, page 349), "A recent traveller has endeavored to show that Jebel Shiagha, the spot where these ruins stand, is Pisgah. The arguments adduced would be equally conclusive in behalf of any of the many flattopped mounds of the neighborhood, one of which must have been Pisgah, although its Arabic equivalent, Fethkhah, seems to have dropped out of the local nomenclature."
CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.