Scripture Daily

Context No. 13 of 4322 · 2 Kings

Context · Reflection

2 Kings 3:1-7: in context

1Now Jehoram the son of Ahab began to reign over Israel in Samaria in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and reigned twelve years. 2He did that which was evil in the LORD’s sight, but not like his father and like his mother, for he put away the pillar of Baal that his father had made. 3Nevertheless he held to the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, with which he made Israel to sin. He didn’t depart from them. 4Now Mesha king of Moab was a sheep breeder; and he supplied the king of Israel with one hundred thousand lambs and the wool of one hundred thousand rams. 5But when Ahab was dead, the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel. 6King Jehoram went out of Samaria at that time, and mustered all Israel. 7He went and sent to Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, saying, “The king of Moab has rebelled against me. Will you go with me against Moab to battle?” He said, “I will go up. I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses.”

After Solomon died, his kingdom split in two: Israel in the north, Judah in the south. The book of Kings follows the northern rulers, most of whom it judges harshly. Jehoram son of Ahab now reigns over Israel from Samaria. Moab, the small kingdom east of the Dead Sea, had been paying Israel a heavy tribute in lambs and wool. When Ahab died, Moab's king Mesha stopped paying and rebelled. This passage is Jehoram mustering the army and asking Judah's king to march with him.

Mesha left his own account of this war. In 1868 a slab of black basalt was found at Dhiban in Jordan, the old Moabite capital, carved at his order around 850 BC. On it he records this same revolt: how Omri king of Israel had oppressed Moab for years, and how Mesha, backed by his god Chemosh, broke Israel's grip. The stone names Omri, names the Israelite tribe of Gad, and carries one of the oldest mentions of the God of Israel found outside the Bible.

So we have two accounts of one war, from opposite sides. Scripture tells it as Israel's trouble with a rebel vassal. The stone tells it as Moab's war of freedom, and each side credits its own god with the outcome. When my account of a falling-out is the only one I have ever really listened to, what would the other stone say?

Sources