Mesha of Moab

Now Mesha, king of Moab, was a sheep breeder who used to pay the king of Israel one hundred thousand lambs and the wool of one hundred thousand rams. But when Ahab died, the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel.

2 Kings 3:4-5

Ancient road, marked by parallel lines of basalt boulders, climbing the eastern slope of the Wadi Nukheila, a major tributary of the Wadi Mujib in Jordan. The road (highlighted in the photo) varies from fifteen to nearly twenty-five feet in width and in difficult stretches is furnished with a constructed roadbed. Aligned with Iron Age sites, it almost certainly dates to the Iron Age and is a good candidate for the highway Mesha built across the Arnon.
Courtesy of A. Kloner.

Mesha ruled Moab, east of the Dead Sea, during the ninth century B.C.E. Mesha is known from the Bible and from his own monumental inscription, displayed here in replica. The Mesha Stela, or Moabite Stone, was set up in Dibon, the capital of Moab, in a sanctuary of the national god Chemosh.

The inscription was discovered in 1868 in Dhiban, ancient Dibon, but soon thereafter was broken into pieces. Because a paper impression was made before the stone was damaged, virtually all of the inscription found in 1868 can be confidently reconstructed. However, even restored, the existing four-foot-high piece may represent only the upper half of Mesha's original monument.

The inscription is written in Moabite, closely related to ancient Hebrew, and sounds very biblical, echoing language and motifs found in 1 and 2 Kings. These similarities support the conclusion that equivalent royal monuments, now lost, must have stood in Samaria and Jerusalem.

Mesha recounts his principal achievements as king. The most important of these was his recovery from Israel of Moabite lands north of the Arnon River (Wadi Mujib). There is also a measure of bombast: Mesha proclaims that "Israel perished utterly forever," which certainly was not the case, though in one town alone he says he slaughtered seven thousand Israelite "men, boys, women, girls and concubines" in devotion to Ashtar-Chemosh.

Moabite Stela of King Mesha discovered in 1888 at modern Diban, dating approximately 840 B.C.E.

Omri, king of Israel, who ruled a generation before Mesha, is mentioned several times. The earliest known reference to Yahweh in a Semitic inscription is also to be found here. At the extant bottom of the stela, Mesha describes an encounter with the House of David, that is, Judah. Although the passage is badly broken, it is clear that Mesha takes credit for a victory over the House of David in the territory south of the Arnon. The words representing king of Israel, Yahweh and House of [Da]vid are highlighted at the top, middle and bottom of the stela respectively.

Mesha also records his public works: temples and sanctuaries; a royal palace; walls, gates and towers; public reservoirs; and a highway across the Arnon, the deep valley that divided Moab in two.

But, as the inscription makes clear, Mesha primarily served Chemosh, the god of Moab, in battle. Like Yahweh of Israel, Chemosh, the divine warrior, directed his nation's military campaigns, received sacrificial offerings of enemy victims and rewarded his faithful servant, the king, with victory in the face of his enemies.

View a translation of the inscription HERE