1 Sam 6:21 Kiryat Yearim (today Abu Gosh) has a long reputation for beguiling or charming enemies into pacts of peace.  Kiryat Yearim (typically identified as Deir el-‘Azar above Abu Gosh) is one of the four Gibeionite cities that made a pact with Joshua (Josh 9:17) and served as a border town between Judah and Benjamin (Josh 15:9,60; 18:28). Kiryath-Yearim has a number of former names such as Baalah, Kiryat-baal, and Baale of Judah (Josh 15:9; 18:14; 2 Sam 6:2; 1 Chr 13:6) and is identified as modern Deir el-‘Azar. 

Kiryat Yearim  also figured prominently in the story of the Ark of the Covenant. Israel received the Ark after the Philistine sent it up the Sorek valley by Beth-Shemesh (1 Sam 6), and after the plague there, it was taken up to Kiriath-Yearim for 20 years (1 Sam 7:1).  The exact location of the Ark in Kiryat Yearim is given as the house of Abinadav son of Eleazar on the hill (2 Sam 6:3).  The modern Arabic term for the tel (Deir el-Azar) may be connected to Eleazar.  The Ark seems to fall out of use (maybe because Mizpah and Gibeah are more prominent) as Saul “paid not regard to it” (1 Chr 13:3).  Psalms 132:6 assumes it is quite unknown until “found in the region of Yaar.”  (But compare 1 Sam 14:18.)  David hoped to move the ark from Kiryat-Yearim to the city of David, but he was afraid of it after Ahio son of Abinadav drove the cart that carried the Ark (rather than the Kohathite priests, see 1 Chr 15) and his brother Uzzah touched the Ark and died at the threshing-floor of Nachon (2 Sam 6:6).  Due to this, David took the Ark aside into the house of Obed-edom from Gath (2 Sam 6:10) for three months (2 Sam 6:11; 1 Chr 13:14), until David finally brought the Ark to the City of David in Jerusalem in a manner that followed the Torah (1 Chr 15-16). 

While plowing in 1905, a farmer discovered a semi-circular wall on the summit of Deir el-‘Azar which turned out to be remnants of a fifth-century Byzantine church.  Many objects from this era can be seen around the new Church built on the summit in the early 1900s by Sister Josephine Rumebe.  This church with its towering statue of Mary belongs to the French Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition, who call it Our Lady of the Ark of the Covenant: associating Mary containing Yeshua with the Ark containing the Ten Commandments.