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. 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.

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. 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 stele opens by describing Moav's enslavement to Omri, king of Israel, due to Kemosh's (the Moabite god) anger at his people.  However, in the days of Omri's son, Mesha was able to triumph over Israel and end their oppression.  Mesha then describes his various victories, the expansion of his borders, his building projects and his wars against the Horonaim.

Significance of the Stone

• Corroboration of Biblical account – Though Tanakh and the stele differ in their accounts [see below], the inscription corroborates the fact of Moav's original submission to Israel and its subsequent rebellion, described in Melakhim II 3. It also mentions figures known from Tanakh, such as Omri, the king of Israel, Mesha, the king of Moav, Kemosh, the Moabite god,⁴ and various Biblical places such as Dibon, Nevo, Gad, and Atarot. 
• 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,⁵ line 31 contains a reference to the House of David.⁶  If he is correct, this is the earliest extra-Biblical reference to the Davidic dynasty.

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 Subjugation and Rebellion – According to Melakhim, Moav rebelled after the death of Achav, and the Israelites attempted to re subjugate them in the time of Yehoram.
• Outcome of the War –

¹ See Rashi.  Others suggest that he 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 paper 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" in 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, Kemosh, who had made Mesha victorious over his enemies.

⁴ See Bemidbar 21:29, Shofetim 11:24, Melakhim I 11:7, and Melakhim II 23:13.

⁵ See A. Lemaire, "“House of David” Restored in Moabite Inscription", Biblical Archaeology Review 20:3 (1994):30-37.

⁶ Not all agree.  See, for instance, N. Neeman, "בין כתובת מלכותית לסיפור נבואי: מרד מישע מלך מואב בהארה היסטורית", Zion66  (2011):5- 40, who questions the reconstruction and raises an alternative possibility, that the phrase should read "בתדודה" (the House of Doda).