Heshbon (hĕsh'bŏn), reason, device. A city of the Moabites, taken by Sihon, king of the Amorites, and made his capital; captured and occupied by the Israelites, Numbers 1:21-26; situated on the boundary between Reuben and Gad; rebuilt by Reuben and made a Levitical city, then being territorially a Gadite city. Numbers 32:3, Numbers 32:37, Deuteronomy 1:4, Deuteronomy 1:2-30, Deuteronomy 3:2, Deuteronomy 3:6, Deuteronomy 4:46, Deuteronomy 29:7, Joshua 9:10, Joshua 12:2, Joshua 12:5, Joshua 1:13-27, Joshua 21:39, Judges 11:19, Judges 11:26, 1 Chronicles 6:81. In later times the Moabites regained possession of Heshbon, so that it is mentioned as a Moabitish town in the prophetic denunciations against that people. Isaiah 15:4, Isaiah 1:16-9, Jeremiah 48:2, Jeremiah 48:34, Jeremiah 48:45, Jeremiah 49:3. The ruins of the city still exist some 15 miles east of the northern end of the Dead sea, on the great table land of Moab. A small hill rises 200 feet above the general level, and upon this is Heshbon, now called Hesbân. East of the city are the remains of water-courses and an enormous cistern, or "fish-pond," which illustrates Song of Solomon 7:4.