How King Mesha of Moab Won the War

Kings 2 3:5

Four Kings battle in this chapter, and one firstborn prince is sacrificed to secure the win. The secret of this story may be hiding in the Louvre.

Yehoram, the King of Israel is dealing with a mounting crisis: Moab, once a tax-paying vassal state to his father King Ahab, is now refusing to obey or pay its tributary dues. 100,000 lambs and wool from 100,000 goats is no small matter:

וַיְהִ֖י כְּמ֣וֹת אַחְאָ֑ב וַיִּפְשַׁ֥ע מֶלֶךְ־מוֹאָ֖ב בְּמֶ֥לֶךְ יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

But after Ahab died, the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel.

Kings 2 3:5

Once again a coalition is forged to fight against this foe - Yehoram invited King Jehoshophat of Judah, and they bring into their alliance the King of the Edomites - for some political reasons we don’t know. The three kings ride on through the desert when their armies run out of water and in their thirsty despair they summon a local prophet - Elisha, known as ‘the man who once washed Elijah’s hands’ is now the seer whose salvation they seek.

Elisha makes it clear that he’s not a fan of Yehoram but as a YHWH worshiper is willing to help them because of Jehoshophat’s role in this plot. 

Musicians are brought so he can go into a trance, and then he shares the visions: Waters, red like blood will quench their thirst though no rains will fall, and blood will be spilled in Moab. The three kings must totally annihilate the rebel nation and seal up every single one of their springs and wells. 

And that is pretty much what happens, except at the last minute Mesha, the King of Moab, pulls off a rare horror trick out of his sleeves and wins the war. 

Why is Elisha’s vision so violent? What is about Moab that demanded this level of cruelty? 

Archeology may have a clue. 

In II Kings: In a Whirlwind, Biblical scholar Alex Israel explores this story and brings the findings that may help make more sense of the question - what did Moab do that was so wrong? 

“The answer may be found in a stunning archaeological discovery, the Mesha Stele, nowadays found in the Louvre.

In 1868, a Prussian missionary named Fredrik Klein identified a remarkable historical artifact some twenty miles east of the Dead Sea, at Dibhan, Jordan. It was a smashed basalt monument, four feet in height, inscribed with thirty-three lines of text. When it was reassembled and deciphered, archaeologists determined that this was a victory tablet in which King Mesha records the Moabite revolt against the dynasty of Ahab, king of Israel. He attributes his triumph to his god, Chemosh. It is a remarkable piece of textual evidence, if only because it corroborates the Tanakh so strongly – mentioning Mesha and Ahab, and also the name of YHWH - the Tetragrammaton. The stele narrates Moab’s vicious revolution against Israel in which Moab attacks Israelite towns and villages throughout the Transjordan, killing the Israelite inhabitants and humiliating Israel’s God: 

“I fought against the city [Atarot] and captured it. And I killed all the people of the city as a sacrifice for Chemosh and for Moab…. And Chemosh said to me, Go take Nebo against Israel, and I went in the night and I fought against it from the break of day till noon, and I took it. And I killed in all seven thousand men, but I did not kill the women and maidens, for I devoted them to Ashtar-Chemosh; and I took from it the vessels of YHWH, and offered them before Chemosh.”

We may propose the following reconstruction of the events. After Ahab’s death and during Ahaziah’s reign, Mesha stages his bloody rebellion against Israel as recorded in the Mesha Stele. This revolution is characterized by widespread slaughter of the Israelites living in Transjordan as well as the abasement of the God of Israel. Jehoram launches a war to regain control. If Moab’s strength is concentrated in the northern territories, as recorded by the Mesha Stele, this goes some way to explain why the Israelite force attacks specifically from the south. However, whereas for the king, the campaign is about regaining prestige, recovering lost territory, and recouping tax monies, the motivation for the prophet and for God is most certainly about avenging the religious insult wielded by Moab. And so, as prophesied by Elisha, God issues a writ of devastation to Moab to avenge Moab’s blasphemy and disgrace of God.

 This war is indeed extraordinary, and only on this basis can we better comprehend the inconsonant divine directive to destroy fields, trees, and water sources.”

With this reasonable motivation, the three kings launch the war on Moab’s King Mesha and at first manage to devastate his army and destroy his land. But Mesha manages to somehow win. He takes his firstborn son and offers him as sacrifice to their god Chmosh. Once again we witness the religious cruelty and mystery of human sacrifice and the mystery of the firstborns. But this one somehow saves the day - maybe motivated by their king’s great sacrifice, as we recognize from Greek myths and other legends from around the world - the Moabites rally, win the battle, as the three kings and their armies flee in fear. 

For King Yehoram, it’s the beginning of the end. His father’s death in battle against Aram and now the inability to take back the territory of Moab means growing losses in revenue, force and prestige. Perhaps that’s why the next few chapters focus less on politics but more on Elisha’s growing stature as a miracle worker. When kings and kingdoms go low, the local prophets are in higher demand. Or at least that’s the author’s intent. Archeology and mythology merge to give us clues to what may have happened  and how, and why, it all went wrong.

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