he took his firstborn. A
king’s sacrifice of his own child, in an effort to placate the gods at a moment
of military emergency, was a familiar practice in the ancient Near East.
and a great fury came against
Israel. This denouement is surely perplexing from a monotheistic point of
view. “Fury” (qetsef) is usually the term for God’s devastating rage
against Israel when the people has transgressed. Here, however, Israel has done
no wrong. And the descent of the fury explicitly reverses Elisha’s favorable
prophecy. This turn of events might reflect an early tradition that accords
Chemosh, the Moabite god, power that must be propitiated by human sacrifice, so
that he will then blight the enemies of Moab. In any case, the story means to
explain why Israel and its allies, after an initial victory, were obliged to
retreat. A Moabite inscription on a stele, discovered in 1868, in which Mesha
speaks in the first person, triumphantly proclaims a sweeping victory over
Israel, though it is not altogether clear whether this victory is over Jehoram
or his predecessor. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York:
W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 2:538)
