Friday, January 7, 2022

Daniel E. Fleming on "Yahweh in the Mesha Inscription"

  

YAHWEH IN THE MESHA INSCRIPTION

 

The Mesha stela celebrates the victories by which the king of Moab secured his realm from a capital in Dibon, including the eviction of the neighboring kingdom of Israel from key centers. While the basic exchange between the two kingdoms is clear enough, the conflict and its participants can too easily be universalized in a way that equates all the elements Moab as monarchy ruled by Mesha and Kamosh as god of Moab; Israel as monarchy ruled by Omri as his son; and Yahweh as god of Israel. Even as we move to biblical evidence for Yahweh before Israel this oldest non-biblical reference to the clear divine name warrants a closer look.

 

In first-person voice, Mesha reports the anger of the god Kamosh against “his land” (‘rṣh), so that he allowed Omri king of Israel to dominate Moab “for many days” (lines 4-6). Before launching into the details, the king boasts, “I looked (victoriously) upon him and upon his house, and Israel disappeared completely and for good” (line 7) (the intensifying effect of the infinitive absolute with the verb ‘bd can be understood to refer to Israel’s removal from the land claimed by Moab, not implying the destruction of that kingdom). The point of departure for Mesha’s campaign is the fact that Omri has taken possession of “the land of Mehadaba,” using the same category (‘rṣ) that defined Moab (lines 7-8), and this is what Kamosh restored to Mesha (lines 8-9). Three settlement-focused victories follow, before Mesha turns to his building achievements: over ‘Aṭarot, Nebo, and Yahaṣ (lines 10-21). Israel is mentioned once by name in connection with each of the three sites: the king of Israel “built” (so, fortified) ‘Aṭarot and Yahaṣ (lines 10-11, 18-19); and Kamosh tells Mesha, “To take Nebo from Israel” (line 14). Yahweh appears only in connection with Nebo, the only town that Mesha empties by sacred slaughter (ḥrm), after which he “took from there the vessels of Yahweh and dragged them before Kamosh” (lines 17-18).

 

We read these lines imagining from the Bible that Yahweh is something like a “national god” for Israel, just as Kamosh appears to be here for Moab, so that Israel’s defeat is equally Kamosh’s defeat of Yahweh. Something like this equation does seem to be intended: Israel is indeed bested by taking Nebo, along with other sites, and the final ritual act of presenting Yahweh’s sacred objects to Kamosh declares the subordination of the shrine to the Moabite god in a way that is only possible because of Israel’s defeat. Yet we should hesitate to assume that we have adequate knowledge of the context. Mesha never claims that Yahweh was introduced to Nebo only with Omri and Israel, and sacred sites tend to persist in time. It is possible that the sanctuary for Yahweh at Nebo preceded Omri’s arrival. Indeed Yahweh of the Mesha text is aligned with Israel and its Omride kings, and the biblical and other inscriptional evidence confirms Yahweh’s identification with Israel in the 9th and 8th centuries. Yet the worship of Yahweh at Nebo need not have required rule by Israel and incorporation into an entity by that name. Just as the “men of Gad” (‘š gd) are understood to have occupied “the land of ‘Aṭarot” from time gone by (line 10), Yahweh may not be a new arrival, though both the Gadites and Yahweh are defeated by Moab (In Num 32:34, the Gadites [“children of Gad”] are said to have rebuilt a list of towns identified with Og of Bashan, including names familiar from the Mesha inscription: Dibon, ‘Aṭarot, Aroer, and more. There is a connection between Gad and ‘Aṭarot, though it is not specific, as in the Mesha text). If the Yahweh shrine at Nebo went back to time before Omri, then it could reflect worship that was not tied to Israel. In such a reconstruction, Yahweh at Nebo would also be “before Israel,” established without reference to Israel by name, even as that people had alone existed in the highlands west of the Jordan River. (Daniel E. Fleming, Yahweh Before Israel: Glimpses of History in a Divine Name [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021], 186-88)

 

Further Reading

 

2 Kings 3:27 and the ontological existence of other gods


John H. Walton and J. Harvey Walton on 2 Kings 3:26-27


More on the Plurality of the Gods in the Old Testament