II KINGS 3:4-8 ARCHEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE

In 1868, an Arab sheikh showed a German missionary a 4-ft. high basalt slab. The missionary expressed interest in buying it and did a paper rubbing of the inscription. But a fight broke out between the missionary's servants and the Arabs, and so negotiations were broken off. The Arabs thought something valuable must be hidden inside, and so they heated it in a fire and poured water on it to break it in pieces. The pieces were then carried away as magic amulets to bless their grain.

An alternative story is given in Biblical Archaeology Today, 20 (3), 2 to account for the breaking of the slab. According to this tradition, some Turks were brought into the negotiations, and the Arabs broke the stone on purpose to keep them from getting it.

Eventually about 2/3 of the slab, called the Moabite Stone or Mesha Stela, was recovered and it now resides in the Louvre. The writing was shown to be in ancient Moabite, closely related to the Hebrew language. And Hadley explains that this stela (dated to the 9^th century BC) actually contains the first existing example of writing in the fully developed Hebrew script. With the help of the original paper rubbing of the stone, the missing portions have been reconstructed, containing the phrase “House of David.” This confirms the early use of this term for David's dynasty, formerly believed by critics to be a late addition to passages such as II Samuel 7:26 and I Kings 2:24.

The monument turns out to have been erected by King Mesha of Moab, and it reads in part: “Omri, king of Israel, humbled Moab many days because Chemosh [god of Moab] was angry at his land. His son [Ahab] followed him, and he also said this, but I have triumphed over him and over his house.” Then there are details about how he took back the cities that Israel had occupied. Among those details is the story of Mesha fortifying several cities to the north in order to protect against any Israelite invasions. Mabie feels that this could explain why King Joram of the Northern Kingdom chose to attack Moab from the south instead of the more expected northern approach, an account found in II Kings 3:8.

Thus, one important feature of this ancient inscription is that it confirms the story found in II Kings 3 and specifically mentions the two biblical names Omri and Mesha.