Dibon
A town on the plateau east of the Dead Sea. It was the home and capital of Mesha, king of Moab, whose stele was found here in 1868.
Dibon appears in an old song about the fall of Moab (Numbers 21:30) and in the lists of towns settled by Gad and Reuben (Numbers 32:34; Joshua 13:9, 17). In the ninth century BC it was Moabite: Mesha calls himself “the Dibonite” and describes the walls, gates, palace and cisterns he built in Qarhoh, apparently a quarter of the town (Mesha Stele lines 1–3 and 21–28). Isaiah and Jeremiah name it in their oracles against Moab (Isaiah 15:2; Jeremiah 48:18, 22). The stele was found among its ruins, at the modern village of Dhiban; see Moab’s Revolt and the Mesha Stele.
What happened here
- about 840 BC, estimated dateMoab’s Revolt and the Mesha Stele
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.