The Mesha Stele: Moab's Side of the Story

August 1868, the ruins of Dhiban, in today's Jordan. Frederick Klein, an Anglican missionary, discovers an inscribed stone, intact.

Scripture: Now Mesha king of Moab was a sheep breeder; and he supplied the king of Israel with the wool of one hundred thousand lambs, and of one hundred thousand rams. But when Ahab was dead, the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel.

This is the Mesha Stele: a smoothed slab of basalt, a hard, dark volcanic rock, about a meter tall, with thirty-four surviving lines of writing.

Scholars date it to around 840 BCE, in the ninth century before Christ. It speaks for Moab, a kingdom in what is now Jordan.

He also describes his many building projects. And he calls Israel's kingdom the House of Omri, meaning the dynasty of King Omri, whose son was Ahab.

It also holds the earliest certain reference outside the Bible to YHWH, the God of Israel.

How does it connect to the passage? Both describe Moab under Israel's rule, then breaking free. The stele's story parallels Second Kings three, with some differences, and tells it from Moab's side.

The stone nearly didn't survive. In November 1869 the Bani Hamida tribe broke it, after Ottoman officials pressed for it to go to Germany. But a papier-mâché impression, called a squeeze, had already been taken.

Its authenticity has been disputed. Some scholars, called biblical minimalists, suggest the text was not real history but an allegory, meaning a symbolic story. Yet the vast majority of biblical archaeologists regard the stele as genuine. It illustrates the setting, not every detail.

Moab's side of the story, kept in stone. May the Lord Jesus Christ be with you today. Follow Bible Evidence for more.