Moab’s Revolt and the Mesha Stele
about 840 BC, estimated dateEstimated date
Mesha, king of Moab, throws off the rule of Israel after Ahab’s death. Kings tells of the campaign sent against him; Mesha’s own stele, found at Dibon, tells of the towns he took from Israel in the name of his god Chemosh.
Kings says that Mesha, king of Moab, was a sheep breeder who paid the king of Israel a heavy tribute in lambs and wool, and that he rebelled when Ahab died (2 Kings 3:4–5). Joram of Israel marched against him with Jehoshaphat of Judah and the king of Edom, by the desert road through Edom. When the army ran out of water, the prophet Elisha promised both water and victory. The allies laid Moab waste and shut Mesha up in Kir-hareseth. There he sacrificed his eldest son on the city wall. Kings then says, “There was great wrath against Israel”, and the allies went home (2 Kings 3:6–27).
Mesha’s own account was found in 1868 at Dhiban, ancient Dibon (Mesha Stele Compston, introduction, p. 6), on a basalt stele now in the Louvre (Mesha Stele Louvre AO 5066). He says that Omri, king of Israel, oppressed Moab for many years because Chemosh, Moab’s god, was angry with his land, and that Omri’s son meant to do the same. But he, Mesha, has seen the downfall of that son and of his house, and Israel, he says, has perished for ever (Mesha Stele lines 4–9).
He then lists his gains. He took Ataroth, where the men of Gad had lived “from of old”, and killed its people (Mesha Stele lines 10–13); Numbers also counts Ataroth among the towns of Gad (Numbers 32:34). At the god’s command he marched by night against Nebo, took it by noon, killed seven thousand people because he had devoted the town to Ashtar-Chemosh, and dragged the vessels of Yahweh before Chemosh (Mesha Stele lines 14–18). Chemosh, he says, drove the king of Israel from Jahaz (Mesha Stele lines 18–21), and he himself rebuilt towns, cisterns and a road by the Arnon, some of it with Israelite prisoners (Mesha Stele lines 22–30).
The two accounts agree that the house of Omri ruled Moab, that Mesha ended that rule, and that Israel did not win it back. They do not describe the same fighting. Kings tells of an invasion by way of Edom that broke off at Kir-hareseth. The stele tells of towns taken on the plateau around Medeba and Dibon (Joshua 13:9) and names no king of Israel but Omri. Each credits its victories to its own god, and Mesha’s devoting of a whole town to his god is the practice that the book of Joshua describes at Jericho (Joshua 6:17–21).
The stele names Yahweh, the god of Israel, in the words of one of Israel’s enemies (Mesha Stele lines 14–18). A broken passage near its foot (Mesha Stele lines 31–32) has been read as naming the “House of David”; that reading is contested and is discussed in the note on dating.
How this is dated
Estimated date. A scholarly estimate from primary evidence, with a margin of years.
The stele gives no year. Kings dates Moab’s revolt to the death of Ahab (2 Kings 1:1; 3:5), and Ahab was alive in 853 BC (Kurkh Monolith ii 91–92). Mesha says that Israel held the land of Medeba through Omri’s days and half the days of his son, forty years in all, and that he has seen the ruin of Omri’s house (Mesha Stele lines 4–9). That may look back on the fall of the dynasty in 841 BC. The Louvre’s record says that it was carved shortly after 842 BC and dates it to the time of Mesha, about 830–805 BC (Mesha Stele Louvre AO 5066). The revolt began after 853 BC, and the stele is placed here about 840 BC; it may be a decade or more later.
The reading of line 31 is disputed. André Lemaire, “’House of David’ Restored in Moabite Inscription”, Biblical Archaeology Review 20/3 (1994), restored the damaged letters as bt[d]wd, “House of David”. Israel Finkelstein, Nadav Na’aman and Thomas Römer, “Restoring Line 31 in the Mesha Stele: The ‘House of David’ or Biblical Balak?”, Tel Aviv 46 (2019), pp. 3–11, read a king’s name instead, perhaps Balak. Michael Langlois, “The Kings, the City and the House of David on the Mesha Stele in Light of New Imaging Techniques”, Semitica 61 (2019), pp. 23–47, defends Lemaire’s reading. Matthieu Richelle, “A Re-examination of the Reading BT DWD (‘House of David’) on the Mesha Stele”, Eretz-Israel 34 (2021), pp. 152–159, judges that it remains unproven.
Primary sources
The Mesha Stele (Moabite Stone)
- Mesha Stele Compston, introduction, p. 6archive.org
- Mesha Stele Louvre AO 5066collections.louvre.fr
- Mesha Stele lines 4–9archive.org
- Mesha Stele lines 10–13archive.org
- Mesha Stele lines 14–18archive.org
- Mesha Stele lines 18–21archive.org
- Mesha Stele lines 22–30archive.org
- Mesha Stele lines 31–32archive.org
The Kurkh Monolith of Shalmaneser III
- Kurkh Monolith ii 91–92oracc.museum.upenn.edu
In context
Grows out of
- 853 BC, firm date
- about 850 BC, traditional date