And they came and besieged him in Abel of Beth-ma'achah, and they cast up a bank against the city, and it stood in the trench: and all the people that were with Joab battered the wall, to throw it down.
Abel of Beth-maachah - or Abel-maim (the meadow of waters) (cf. 1 Kings 15:20; 2 Kings 15:29; 2 Chronicles 16:4). A verdant place-the addition of "maachah" betokening that it belonged to the district Maachah, which lay far up the Jordan, at the foot of Lebanon. The first preparation for a siege was the construction of a causeway or embankment for wheeling the battering rams and other military machines close to the wall. These consisted sometimes simply of immense mounds of earth, at other times the heap of earth was largely mixed with branches of trees, or a rude pathway was formed of stones or brickwork. Such a construction was necessary, especially where there was a moat or trench round the city, as there appears to have been at Abel. Numerous illustrations of these military processes for carrying on a siege are found depicted on the monuments of Assyria and Egypt.