The Mesha Inscription
In 853, according to the annals of
the Assyrian king of Shalmaneser III, a coalition of states, including Israel,
opposed the Assyrians in the Levant Moab is not listed in the coalition.
Perhaps after the death of Ahab of Israel in the mid-ninth century (2 Kgs 1:1;
3:5). Mesha, the Moabite king, concluded to revolt and cease paying tribute to
Israel in the form of sheep. In 1868, a monumental ninth-century inscription located
in Dibon (in modern Jordan) was brought to the attention of western scholars.
The text, in Mesha’s words, tells how he captured Israelite territory and
overtook the Israelite tribe of Gad, taking prisoners and using them to rebuild
damaged battles with Israel and tells of tearing down Israel’s temples and dedicating
them to Kemosh, the Moabite deity:
Omri was king of Israel and he
opposed Moab many days because Kemosh was angry with his land. And his son
succeeded him and he also said, “I will oppress Moab.”
In my days he said, “I will oppress,”
but I prevailed over him and his house. So Israel was destroyed with an eternal
destruction.
Now Omri occupied all the land of
Mehedeba. He dwelt in it his days and half the days of his sons’ 40 years, but
Kemosh restored it in my days.
So I brought from there [Ataroth]
its Davidic altar hearth and I dragged it before Kemosh in Kerioth. . . . And
Kemosh said to me, “Go! Taken possession of Nebo from Israel.” So I went in the
night and I fought against it from the breaking of dawn until mid-day. I took
it and killed all its 7000 men and boys; women and girls, and even pregnant
women; because I devoted it to Ashtar-Kemosh. And I took from there the vessels
of YHWH and dragged them before Kemosh.
Now the king of Israel built Jahaz
and dwelt in it when he fought against me. But Kemosh drove him from before me,
so I took from Moab 200 men; all its priests. And I brought it against Jahaz
and I took it in order to add upon Dibon. Then I cut out the canals for its
citadel with the prisoners of Israel. . . . And I built Mehedeba and the temple
of Diblaten. (translation, Aaron Schade, Syntactic and Literary Analysis of
Ancient Northwest Semitic Inscriptions [2006]). (Aaron P. Schade, “Ammonites,
Moabites, Phoenicians, Arameans, and Edomites,” in A Bible Reader’s History
of the Ancient World, ed. Kent P. Jackson [Jerusalem Center for Near
Eastern Studies, Brigham Young University, 2016], 203)
