In
Eusebius'
Onomasticon, Kiryat Ye'arim is placed about 9
Roman miles, or about , from
Jerusalem.
Palestine Exploration Fund explorers
Claude Reignier Conder and Henderson have identified it with the site now known as ''Khirbet 'Erma
, a ruin located south of Kasla and east of . However, starting with Edward Robinson, biblical Kiriath-Jearim has been more often identified with Deir el-Azar (Tel Qiryat Yearim''), a place near
Abu Ghosh on a hill where the Deir El-Azar Monastery currently stands, about 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 . Kiriath-Jearim was described as a
Hivite city linked to the
Gibeonites (see
Joshua 9:17). It was a key landmark in identifying the border between the tribes of
Judah and
Benjamin (see
Joshua 15:9 &
18:14, 15). It is mentioned as the place the
Ark of the Covenant was moved to after being in (
1 Samuel 6:21–
7:2). More than twenty 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 (meaning City of Baal, or City of the Lord) may indicate the population change that took place after
Joshua's military campaign to take possession of the land from its previous inhabitants. According to
Israel Finkelstein and Thomas Romer, the possibility that Kiriath-ba‘al/Ba‘alah was the original name of the town, or more correctly its Northern name, hints that the god
YHWH was worshipped as
Baal, before that title became a negative link with "foreign" (Phoenician or other) storm gods. The
Hebrew Bible identifies at least one prophet of God who came from this town.
Uriah, the son of Shemaiah, was from Kiriath-Jearim, and was a contemporary of
Jeremiah who prophesied against Jerusalem (see
Jeremiah 26:20). This aroused the wrath of
King Jehoiakim (r. 609–598 BC) 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 (Jeremiah 26:22–23). The
Books of Chronicles identifies
Shobal (possibly a descendant of
Caleb) as the "father of Kiriath-Jearim" (see 1 Chronicles 2:50–53), 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 (see
Nehemiah 7:29). ==See also==