The Moabite Rebellion and the Mesha Stele/0

The Moabite Rebellion and the Mesha Stele

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Biblical Sources

Melakhim II 3 tells how Mesha, the King of Moav, had originally paid tribute to Israel, but rebelled after the death of Achav. As a result, Achav's descendant, Yehoram, makes an alliance with Yehoshafat, the king of Judah, and with Edom to retaliate. With Hashem's aid,  Israel is able to smite Moav, but despite the initial success, the battle ends without a clear victor. The verses are ambiguous but suggest that, in desperation, the King of Moav had offered his son as a sacrifice,¹ leading to "great wrath on Israel."  Though the nature and reason for this "wrath" is unclear, it led to the premature end of the battle and the return of the troops to Israel.

Extra-Biblical Sources: The Mesha Stele

The Moabite rebellion is attested to outside of Tanakh, as it is discussed in detail in an inscription known as the Mesha Stele or the Moabite Stone, a victory monument erected by Mesha, King of Moav. The monument was discovered by a missionary named Frederick Klein in 1868 in Dhiban (Biblical Dibon)² and is presently in the Louvre Museum in Paris.³

The inscription opens by describing Moav's servitude to Israel, declaring that Omri, King of Israel had "humbled Moav many years, for Chemosh⁴ was angry at his land". Mesha then tells how, in the days of Omri's son, he was able to triumph over Israel and end their oppression.  The rest of the stele discusses Mesha's various victories, the expansion of his borders, and his building projects.

Relationship to the Biblical text

There are two main points of discrepancy between the account of the rebellion in Tanakh and in the Mesha Stone:

• Dating of the Rebellion – According to Sefer Melakhim, Moav rebelled after the death of Achav, and the Israelites attempted to re-subjugate them in the time of Yehoram. The Mesha Inscription, on the other hand, records that Omri dominated Moab "in his days and half the days of his son: 40 years," after which point Mesha rebelled.According to the first part of Mesha's words it would seem that the rebellion occurred in the middle of Achav's reign ("half the days of his son").  Yet,  the phrase "forty years" suggest that it occurred several years after Achav's death (since Omri and Achav reigned for only 34 years between them).⁵ 
• Outcome of the War – Sefer Melakhim gives the impression that Moav was almost decimated, and includes no accounts of any Moabite victories. The Mesha Stele, in contrast, says nothing of its near-defeat , while instead reporting the capture of Israelite territory and the slaughter of thousands of Israelites.

Additional Significance of the Stele

• Earliest extra-Biblical reference to Hashem -– The inscription bears the earliest extra-Biblical reference to Hashem, with lines 17-18 reading: "ואקח. משמ. א[ת כ]לי יהו-ה "

• Earliest extra-Biblical reference to the House of David – According to the reconstruction of Andre Lemaire,⁶ line 31 contains a reference to the House of David.⁷  If he is correct, this is the earliest extra-Biblical reference to the Davidic dynasty.

¹ See RashiMelakhim II 3:27About R. Shelomo Yitzchaki who explains the story in this manner.  R"Y KaraMelakhim II 3:27About R. Yosef Kara and RadakMelakhim II 3:27About R. David Kimchi (in the name of his father), however, suggest that Mesha sacrificed the heir to the throne of Edom, which caused Edom to get angry at his allies and the alliance to break up.

² F. Klein saw the stone intact, but was, unfortunately, one of the last Europeans to do so. Before it was purchased, the stele was smashed into many fragments by local Bedouin. Eventually many of the fragments (amounting to more than 600 of the original 1000 words) were recovered and pieced together, and the missing sections were largely reconstructed based on a freeze (a papier-mâché impression) done of the inscription before it was broken.  For a full discussion of the story behind the discovery, attempts to purchase, and breaking of the stone, see S.H Horn, "The Discovery of the Moabite Stone", The Word of the Lord Shall Go  Forth, Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman (Indianna, 1983): 497-505.

³ The stele is made of basalt stone and stands about four feet high and two feet wide and dates to c. 840 BCE.  According to most scholars, it is written in Moabite (a language very similar to Biblical Hebrew), using the Old Hebrew / Phoenician alphabet. According to the stele, the reason for its composition was the erection of a sanctuary for the Moabite god, Chemosh, who had made Mesha victorious over his enemies.

⁴ Chemosh is the Moabite god.

⁵ This internal discrepancy already suggests that at least one of the two phrases might need to be reinterpreted.

⁶ See A. Lemaire, "“House of David” Restored in Moabite Inscription", Biblical Archaeology Review 20:3 (1994):30-37.

⁷ Not all agree.  See, for instance, N. Neeman, "בין כתובת מלכותית לסיפור נבואי: מרד מישע מלך מואב בהארה היסטורית", Zion 66 (2011): 5- 40, who questions the reconstruction and raises an alternative possibility, that the phrase should read "בתדודה" (the House of Doda).