_THE INVASION OF MOAB_
2 KINGS iii. 4-27
"What reinforcement we may gain from hope,
If not, what resolution from despair."
MILTON, _Paradise Lost_, i. 190.
Ahaziah, as Elijah had warned him, never recovered from the injuries
received in his fall through the lattice, and after his brief and
luckless reign died without a child. He was succeeded by his brother
Jehoram ("Jehovah is exalted"), who reigned for twelve years.[43]
Jehoram began well. Though it is said that he did "that which was evil
in the sight of the Lord," we are told that he was not so guilty as his
father or his mother. He did not, of course, abolish the worship of
Jehovah under the cherubic symbol of the calves; no king of Israel
thought of doing that, and so far as we know neither Elijah, nor Elisha,
nor Jonah, nor Micaiah, nor any genuine prophet of Israel before Hosea,
ever protested against that worship, which was chiefly disparaged by
prophets of Judah like Amos and the nameless seer.[44] But Jehoram at
least removed the _Matstsebah_ or stone obelisk which had been reared in
Baal's honour in front of his temple by Ahab, or by Jezebel in his
name.[45] In this direction, however, his reformation must have been
exceedingly partial, for until the sweeping measures taken by Jehu the
temple and images of Baal still continued to exist in Samaria under his
very eyes, and must have been connived at if not approved.
The first great measure which occupied the thoughts of Jehoram was to
subdue the kingdom of Moab, which had been restored to independence by
the bravery of the great pastoral-king Mesha;[46] or at any rate to
avenge the series of humiliating defeats which Mesha had inflicted on
his brother Ahaziah. A war of forty years' duration[47] had ended in the
complete success of Moab. The loss of a tribute of the fleeces of one
hundred thousand lambs and one hundred thousand rams was too serious to
be lightly faced.[48] Jehoram laid his plans well. First he ordered a
muster of all the men of war throughout his kingdom, and then appealed
for the co-operation of Jehoshaphat and his vassal-king of Edom. Both
kings consented to join him. Jehoshaphat had already been the victim of
a powerful and wanton aggression on the part of King Mesha,[49] from
which he had been delivered by the panic of his foes in the Valley of
Salt. Though the king of Edom had, on that occasion, been an ally of
Mesha, the forces of Edom had fallen the first victims of that
internecine panic. Both Judah and Edom, therefore, had grave wrongs to
avenge, and eagerly seized the opportunity to humble the growing pride
of the people of Chemosh. The attack was wisely arranged. It was
determined to advance against Moab from the south, through the territory
of Edom, by a rough and mountainous track, and, as far as possible, to
take the nation by surprise. The combined host took a seven days'
circuit round the south of the Dead Sea, hoping to find an abundant
supply of water in the stream which flows through the Wady-el-Ahsa,
which separates Edom from Moab.[50] But owing to recent droughts the
Wady was waterless, and the armies, with their horses, suffered all the
agonies of thirst. Jehoram gave way to despair, bewailing that Jehovah
should have brought together these three kings to deliver them a
helpless prey into the hands of Moab. But the pious Jehoshaphat at once
thinks of "inquiring of the Lord" by some true prophet, and one of
Jehoram's courtiers informs him that no less a person than Elisha, the
son of Shaphat, who had been the attendant of Elijah, is with the
host.[51] We are surprised to find that his presence in the camp had
excited so little attention as to be unknown to the king;[52] but
Jehoshaphat, on hearing his name, instantly acknowledged his prophetic
inspiration. So urgent was the need, and so deep the sense of Elisha's
greatness, that the three kings in person went on an embassy "to the
servant of him who ran before the chariot of Ahab." Their humble appeal
to him produced so little elation in his mind that, addressing Jehoram,
who was the most powerful, he exclaimed, with rough indignation: "What
have I to do with thee? Get thee to the prophets of thy
father,"--nominal prophets of Jehovah, who will say to thee smooth
things and prophesy deceits, as four hundred of them did to Ahab--"and
to the Baal-prophets of thy mother." Instead of resenting this scant
respect Jehoram, in utmost distress, deprecated the prophet's anger, and
appealed to his pity for the peril of the three armies. But Elisha is
not mollified. He tells Jehoram that but for the presence of Jehoshaphat
he would not so much as look at him: so completely was the destiny of
the people mixed up with the character of their kings! Out of respect
for Jehoshaphat Elisha will do what he can. But all his soul is in a
tumult of emotion. For the moment he can do nothing. He needs to be
calmed from his agitation by the spell of music, and bids them send a
minstrel to him. The harper came, and as Elisha listened his soul was
composed, and "the hand of the Lord came upon him" to illuminate and
inspire his thoughts.[53] The result was that he bade them dig trenches
in the dry wady, and promised that, though they should see neither wind
nor rain, the valley should be filled with water to quench the thirst of
the fainting armies, their horses and their cattle. After this God would
also deliver the Moabites into their hand; and they were bidden to smite
the cities, fell the trees, stop the wells, and mar the smiling
pasture-lands, which constituted the wealth of Moab, with stones. That
the hosts of Judah and Israel and jealous Edom should be prone to
afflict this awfully devastating vengeance on a power by which they had
been so severely defeated on past occasions, and on which they had so
many wrongs and blood-feuds to avenge, was natural; but it is surprising
to find a prophet of the Lord giving the commission to ruin the gifts of
God and spoil the innocent labours of man, and thus to inflict misery on
generations yet unborn. The behest is directly contrary to rules of
international war which have prevailed even between non-Christian
nations, among whom the stopping or poisoning of wells and the cutting
down of fruit trees has been expressly forbidden. It is also against the
rules of war laid down in Deuteronomy.[54] Such, however, was the
command attributed to Elisha; and, as we shall see, it was fulfilled,
and seems to have led to disastrous consequences.
Cheered by the promise of Divine aid which the prophet had given them,
the host retired to rest. The next morning at day-dawn, when the
_minchah_ of fine flour, oil, and frankincense was offered,[55] water,
which, according to the tradition of Josephus, had fallen at three
days' distance on the hills of Edom, came flowing from the south and
filled the wady with its refreshing streams.
The incident itself is highly instructive. It throws light both upon
the general accuracy of the ancient narrative, and on the fact that
events to which a directly supernatural colouring is given are, in
many instances, not so much supernatural as providential. The
deliverance of Israel was due, not to a portent wrought by Elisha, but
to the pure wisdom which he derived from the inspiration of God. When
the counsels of princes were of none effect, and for lack of the
spirit of counsel the people were perishing, his mind alone,
illuminated by a wisdom from on high, saw what was the right step to
take. He bade the soldiers dig trenches in the dry torrent bed,--which
was the very step most likely to ensure their deliverance from the
torment of thirst, and which would be done under similar circumstances
to this day. They saw neither wind nor rain; but there had been a
storm among the farther hills, and the swollen watercourses discharged
their overflow into the trenches of the wady which were ready prepared
for them, and offered the path of least resistance.
Moab, meanwhile, had heard of the advance of the three kings through the
territories of Edom. The whole military population had mustered in arms,
and stood on the frontier, on the other side of the dry wady, to oppose
the invasion. For they knew this would be a struggle of life and death,
and that if defeated they would have no mercy to expect. When the sun
rose, and its first rays burned on the wady, which had been dry on the
previous evening, the water which, unknown to the Moabites, had filled
the trenches in the night, looked red as blood. Doubtless it may have
been stained, as Ewald says, by the red soil which gave its name to the
red land of the "red king, Edom"; but as it gleamed under the dawn the
Moabites thought that those seemingly crimson pools had been filled with
the blood of their enemies, who had fallen by each other's swords. Their
own recent experience when Jehoshaphat met them in the Valley of Salt
showed them how easy it was for temporary allies to be seized by panic,
and to fight among themselves.[56]
The army of their invaders was composed of heterogeneous and mutually
conflicting elements. Between Israel and Judah there had been nearly a
century of war,[57] and only a brief reunion; and Edom, recently the
willing and natural ally of Moab, was not likely to fight very
zealously for Judah, which had reduced her to vassalage. So the
Moabites said to one another, as they pointed to the unexpected
apparition of those red pools: "This is blood. The kings are surely
destroyed, and they have smitten each man his fellow. Moab to the
spoil!" They rushed down tumultuously on the camp of Israel, and found
the soldiers of Jehoram ready to receive them. Taken by surprise, for
they had expected no resistance, they were hurled back in utter
confusion and with immense slaughter. The three kings pushed their
advantage to the utmost. They went forward into the land, driving and
smiting the Moabites before them, and ruthlessly carrying out the
command attributed to Elisha. They beat down the cities--most of which
in a land of flocks and herds were little more than pastoral villages;
they rendered the green fields useless with stones; they filled up all
the wells with earth; they felled every fruit-bearing tree of any
value. At last only one stronghold, Kir-haraseth, the chief fenced
town of Moab, held out against them.[58] Even this fortress was sore
bested. The slingers, for which Israel, and specially the tribe of
Benjamin, was so famous, advanced to drive its defenders from the
battlements. King Mesha fought with undaunted heroism. He decided to
take the seven hundred warriors who were left to him, and cut his way
through the besieging host to the king of Edom. He thought that even
now he might persuade the Edomites to abandon this new and unnatural
alliance, and turn the battle against their common enemies. But the
numbers against him were too strong, and he found the plan impossible.
Then he formed a dreadful resolution, dictated to him by the extremity
of his despair. His inscription at Karcha shows that he was a profound
and even fanatical believer in Chemosh, his god. Chemosh could still
deliver him. If Chemosh was, as Mesha says in his inscription, "angry
with his land"--if, even for a time, he allowed his faithful people
and his devoted king to be afflicted--it could not be for any lack of
power on his part, but only because they had in some way offended him,
so that he was wroth, or because he had gone on a journey, or was
asleep, or deaf.[59] How could he be appeased? Only by the offering of
the most precious of all the king's possessions; only by the
self-devotion of the crown-prince, on whom were centred all the
nation's hopes. Mesha would force Chemosh to help him for very shame.
He would offer to Chemosh a human sacrifice, the sacrifice of his
eldest son that should have reigned in his stead. Doubtless the young
prince gave himself up as a willing offering, for that was essential
to the holocaust being valid and acceptable.[60]
So upon the wall of Kir-haraseth, in the sight of all the Moabites,
and of the three invading armies, the brave and desperate hero of a
hundred fights, who had inflicted so many reverses upon these enemies,
and received so many at their hands, but who, having liberated his
country, now saw all the efforts of his life ruined at one blow--took
his eldest son, kindled the sacrificial fire, and then and there
solemnly offered that horrible burnt-offering.[61]
And it proved effectual, though far otherwise than Mesha had expected.
He was delivered; and, doubtless, if ever he reared, at Kirharaseth or
elsewhere, another memorial stone, he would have attributed his
deliverance to his national god. But here, in the annals of Elisha,
the result is hurried over, and a veil is, so to speak, dropped upon
the dreadful scene with the one ambiguous expression, "And there was
great wrath against Israel: and they departed from him, and returned
to their own land."
The phrase awakens but does not satisfy our curiosity. We are not
certain of the translation, or of the meaning. It may be, as in the
margin of the Revised Version, "there came great wrath upon
Israel."[62] But wrath from whom? and on what account? The word
"wrath" all but invariably denotes divine wrath; but we cannot imagine
(as some critics do) that any Israelite of the schools of the prophets
would sanction the notion that the chosen people were allowed to
suffer from the kindled wrath of Chemosh. Can we then suppose that the
desperate act of King Mesha was a proof that Israel, who was no doubt
the most interested and the most remorseless of the invaders, had
pressed the Moabites too hard, and carried his vengeance much too far?
That is by no means impossible. The prophet Amos denounces upon Moab
in after years the doom that fire should devour the palaces of
Kirioth, and that Moab should perish with shoutings, and all his royal
line be cut off, for the far less offence of having burned into lime
the bones of the king of Edom.[63] The command of Elisha did not
exempt the Israelites from their share of moral responsibility. Jehu
was commissioned to be an executioner of vengeance upon the house of
Ahab. Yet Jehu is expressly condemned by the prophet Hosea for the
tiger-like ferocity and horrible thoroughness with which he had
carried out his destined work.[64] Only one other explanation is
possible. If "wrath" here has the unusual sense of human indignation,
the clause can only imply that the armies of Judah and Edom were
roused to anger by the unpitying spirit which Israel had displayed.
The horrible tragedy enacted upon the wall of Kirharaseth awoke their
consciences to the sense of human compassion. These, after all, were
fellow-men--fellow-men of kindred blood to their own--whom they had
driven to straits so frightful as to cause a king to burn his own heir
alive as a mute appeal to his god in the hour of overwhelming ruin.
They had done enough:
"Sunt lacrimæ rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt."
They hastily broke up the league, dissolved the alliance, returned
horror-stricken to their own land. They left Moab indeed in possession
of his last fortress, but they had reduced his territory to a
wilderness before they retired and called it peace.
FOOTNOTES:
[43] There are great difficulties in the statement (2 Kings iii. 1)
that he began to reign in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat. I have
not entered, nor shall I enter, into the minute and precarious
conjectures necessitated by the uncertainties and contradictions of
this synchronism introduced into the narrative by some editor. Suffice
it that with the aid of the Assyrian records we have certain _points
de repère_; from which we can, with the assistance of the historian,
conjecturally restore the main data. In the dates given at the head of
the chapters I follow Kittel, as a careful inquirer. Some of the
approximately fixed dates are (see Appendix I.):--
854. Battle of Karkar (Ahab and Benhadad against Shalmaneser II.)
738. Tribute of Menahem to Tiglath-Pileser II.
732. Fall of Damascus.
722. Capture of Samaria by Sargon.
720. Defeat of Sabaco by Sargon in battle of Raphia.
705. Accession of Sennacherib.
701. Campaign against Hezekiah.
608. Death of Josiah.
[44] But neither the man of God from Judah nor Amos directly denounce
the calf-worship, so much as its concomitant sins and irregularities.
[45] Perhaps the true reading is "pillars" (LXX., Vulg., Arab.).
[46] He is called "a sheep-master," _noked_; LXX., νωκήδ. Elsewhere
the word occurs only in Amos i. 1. The Alex. LXX. has ἦν φέρων φόρον.
[47] According to the Moabite Stone.
[48] It is not clear whether the lambs and rams were sent with the
fleeces. The A.V. says "lambs and rams with their wool," in accordance
with Josephus--μυριάδας εἴκοσι προβάτων σὺν τοῖς πόκοις. The LXX. has
the vague ἐπὶ πόκων, and implies that this was a special fine after a
defeat in the revolt (ἐν τῇ ἐπαναστάσει): but comp. Isa. xvi. 1.
[49] 2 Chron. xx. 1-30.
[50] Robinson (_Bibl. Res._, ii. 157) identifies it with the brook
_Zered_. Deut. ii. 13; Num. xxi. 12. The name means "valley of
water-pits." W. R. Smith quotes Doughty, _Travels_, i. 26.
[51] Comp. 1 Kings xxii. 7. The phrase "who poured water on the hands
of Elijah" is a touch of Oriental custom which the traveller in remote
parts of Palestine may still often see. Once, when driven by a storm
into the house of the Sheykh of a tribe which had a rather bad
reputation for brigandage, I was most hospitably entertained; and the
old white-haired Sheykh, his son, and ourselves were waited on by the
grandson, a magnificent youth, who immediately after the meal brought
out an old richly chased ewer and basin, and poured water over our
hands, soiled by eating out of the common dish, of course without
spoons or forks.
[52] This seems to have struck Josephus (_Antt._, IX. iii. 1), who
says that "he _chanced_ to be in a tent (ἔτυχε κατεσκηνωκώς) outside
the host."
[53] Comp. 1 Sam. x. 5; 1 Chron. xxv. 1; Ezek. i. 3, xxxiii. 22.
_Menaggēn_ is one who plays on a stringed instrument, _n'gînāh_. The
Pythagoreans used music in the same way (Cic., _Tusc. Disp._, iv. 2).
[54] Deut. xx. 19, 20.
[55] Lev. ii. 1. Comp. 1 Kings xviii. 36.
[56] This dreadful result crippled the revolt of Vindex against Nero.
[57] Jeroboam I., B.C. 937; Joram, 854.
[58] Isa. xv. 1, Kir of Moab; Jer. xlviii. 31, Kir-heres. It is built
on a steep calcareous rock, surrounded by a deep, narrow glen, which
thence descends westward to the Dead Sea, under the name of the Wady
Kerak. We know that the armies of Nineveh habitually practised these
brutal modes of devastation in the districts which they conquered. See
Layard, _passim_; Rawlinson, _Ancient Monarchies_ ii. 84.
[59] 1 Kings xviii. 27. Comp. Psalm xxxv. 23, xliv. 23, lxxxiii. 1, etc.
[60] Comp. Micah vi. 7. This is an entirely different incident from
that alluded to in Amos ii. 1.
[61] Eusebius (_Præp. Evang._, iv. 16) quotes from Philo's Phœnician
history a reference to human sacrifices (τοῖς τιμωροῖς δαίμοσιν) at
moments of desperation.
[62] The rendering is doubtful. LXX., καὶ ἐγένετο μετάμελος μέγας ἐπὶ
Ἰσράηλ; Vulg., indignatio _in_ Israel; Luther, _Da ward Israel sehr
zornig_.
[63] Amos ii. 1-3.
[64] Hos. i. 4: "I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of
Jehu."