Might Dr. Velikovsky have been right after all about Mesha of Moab?
by
Damien F. Mackey
“In his days did Hiel the Bethelite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof
in Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Segub,
according to the word of the LORD, which he spoke by Joshua the son of Nun”.
I Kings 16:34
That Mesha king of Moab - {“... known most famously for having the Mesha Stele inscribed and erected at Dibon. In this inscription he calls himself "Mesha, son of Kemosh[-yatti], the king of Moab, the Dibonite".”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesha} - biblically attested during king Ahab’s dynasty (2 Kings 3:4-27), but named otherwise, elsewhere (I Kings 16:34), as “Hiel the Bethelite”, was the conclusion that I reached in my article:
Hiel's Jericho. Part Two (a): Who was this “Hiel of Bethel”?
Chapter 16 of the First Book of Kings will, in the course of its introducing us to King Ahab and his no-good ways as follows (vv. 30-34):
Ahab son of Omri did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him. He not only considered it trivial to commit the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, but he also married Jezebel daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and began to serve Baal and worship him. He set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal that he built in Samaria. Ahab also made an Asherah pole and did more to arouse the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than did all the kings of Israel before him.
suddenly interrupt this description with its surprising and bloody note about Hiel the Bethelite’s building of Jericho at the cost of the lives of his two sons. A surprising thing about this insertion (apart from the horrific sacrifice of the sons) is that an otherwise unknown personage, Hiel (unknown at least under this name), is found to be building a city at a major and ancient site, Jericho (Tell es-Sultan), whilst the country is under the rulership of two most powerful kings – Omride in the north allied to a mighty king of Judah in the south.
How might this strange situation concerning Hiel have come about?
Before my attempting to answer this question, I should like simply to list a few of the more obvious reasons why I am drawn to the notion that Hiel was a king of Moab, and that he was, specifically, Mesha.
We find that:
· A king of Moab, Eglon, has previously ruled over a newly-built Jericho (MB IIB);
· Hiel and Mesha were contemporaneous with King Ahab of Israel;
· Hiel and Mesha were sacrificers of their own sons (cf. I Kings 16:34 & 2 Kings 3:27).
But, far more startling than any of this is the following potential bombshell:
Does Mesha King of Moab tell us straight out in his stele inscription
that he built Jericho – and with Israelite labour?
I have only just become aware of this bell-ringing piece of information - after I had already come to the conclusion that Hiel may well have been Mesha. It is information that may be, in its specificity, beyond anything that I could have expected or hoped for. Thus we read at: http://christiananswers.net/q-abr/abr-a019.html
Later on in the inscription he [King Mesha of Moab] says,
I built Qeriho [Jericho?]: the wall of the parkland and the wall of the acropolis; and I built its gates, and I built its towers; and I built the king's house; and I made banks for the water reservoir inside the town; and there was no cistern inside the town, in Qeriho, and I said to all the people: “Make yourself each a cistern in his house”; and I dug the ditches for Qeriho with prisoners of Israel (lines 21-26).
Since Mesha erected his stela to honor Chemosh in “this high place for Chemosh in Qeriho,” and since the stela was found at Dhiban, identified as ancient Dibon, most scholars believe that Qeriho was the name of the royal citadel at Dibon. Note that Israelite captives were used to cut the timber used to construct Qeriho. ….
Conclusion 1: Mesha of Moab was “Hiel the Bethelite” who built Jericho at about the time of king Ahab.
But why would a Moabite king named Mesha, who apparently built Jericho, have a Hebrew name, Hiel (חִיאֵ֛ל) “El lives”, and be called a ‘Bethelite’ (בֵּית הָאֱלִי)?
To answer the last question first, why was he called a ‘Bethelite’?, it would be expected that the foreign king’s incursion into Israelite territory, thereby enabling for him to build Jericho, must have required that he first have a solid base in the land, hence Bethel. Now, is there any evidence that, in the time of king Ahab, the town of Bethel was under any sort of foreign threat?
Yes, I believe that there is (see below).
As for why Mesha would have also a Hebrew name - we have found that foreign kings were thus named by the biblical writers. One example of this is Abimelech, ruler of the Philistines and, too, so I think, of Egypt. See e.g. my article:
Toledôt Explains Abram's Pharaoh
Thutmose III, biblically named “Shishak, is probably another example of this:
Thutmose III best candidate for “Shishak”
To find worrying indications in ancient texts that Bethel was under threat from foreign incursions we need to turn to the El Amarna letters, at the time of Abdi-Hiba of Urusalim (Jerusalem) and Lab’ayu further to the north.
And we need to put these two characters into a revised historical context, with Abdi-hiba as king Jehoram of Judah:
King Abdi-Hiba of Jerusalem Locked in as a ‘Pillar’ of Revised History
{but not certainly corresponding with an El Amarna pharaoh as is usually thought, “no Egyptian ruler appears to be specifically named in this set of letters ...”}:
and with Lab’ayu as King Ahab himself:
Bible Illuminates History & Philosophy. Part Twenty Two: King Ahab of Israel (ii): His "two sons" in El Amarna
Neither of these El Amarna characters can be said unequivocally to have been writing to a pharaoh.
Then, having accepted these biblical identifications of El Amarna personages, we need to embrace the view that a “Bethel” (of which there were likely more than one) was the strategically important city of Shechem. On this, see my article:
Geography of the Book of Judith
Conclusion 2: El Amarna’s Lab’ayu was king Ahab of Israel, and Bethel was another name for Shechem.
Happily for us, now, Shechem was indeed under threat from foreign, or outlaw, incursion during the very time of Lab’ayu/Ahab. See next.
“… “sa-gaz”, which ideographically can also be read “habatu”, is translated “plunderers”, or “cutthroats”, or “rebellious bandits” … sometimes the text speaks of “gaz-Mesh”
as a single person … and therefore here Mesh cannot be the suffix for the plural.
I shall not translate Mesh … because it is the personal name of King Mesha …”.
Dr. I. Velikovsky
My conclusion that Mesha and his Moabites were the hapiru of EA 289 accords perfectly with Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky’s argument (in Ages in Chaos I: From the Exodus to King Akhnaton, pp. 232-233) that the people of king Mesha, the sa-gaz (Mesh), were the hapiru:
In the tablets written by the vassal king of Jerusalem (Urusalim) to the pharaoh, repeated mention is made of the “Habiru,” who threatened the land from east of the Jordan. In letters written from other places, there is no reference to Habiru, but an invasion of sa-gaz-mesh {sa-gaz is also read ideographically “habatu” and translated as "cutthroats", "pillagers") is mentioned over and over again. With the help of various letters it has been established that Habiru and sa-gaz (habatu) were identical. ....
[End of quote]
Previously, in my article:
King Ahab in El Amarna
I had written (and had then completely forgotten some of this) regarding Mesha of Moab, Bethel, and the sa-gaz:
The House of David and Southern Moab
“And the house [of Da]vid dwelt in Horanaim” (line 31)
Line 31 is perhaps the most significant line in the entire inscription. In 1993, a stela was discovered at Tel Dan in northern Israel mentioning the “House of David” (Bible and Spade, Autumn 1993: 119-121). This mid-ninth century BC inscription provided the first mention of David in a contemporary text outside the Bible. The find is especially significant since in recent years several scholars have questioned the existence of David. At about the same time the Dan stela was found, French scholar Andre Lemaire was working on the Mesha Inscription and determined that the same phrase appeared there in line 31 (Bible and Spade, Summer 1995: 91-92). Lemaire was able to identify a previously indistinguishable letter as a “d” in the phrase “House of David.” This phrase is used a number of times in the Old Testament for the Davidic dynasty.
From this point on in Mesha's record it appears that he is describing victories south of the Arnon river, an area previously controlled by Judah. Although there are only three lines left in the surviving portion, Lemaire believes we only have about half of the original memorial (1994: 37). The missing half would have told how Mesha regained the southern half of Moab from Judah. The complete text regarding Horanaim reads as follows:
And the house [of Da]vid dwelt in Horanaim […] and Chemosh said to me: “Go down! Fight against Horanaim.” And I went down, and [I fought against the town, and I took it; and] Chemosh [resto]red it in my days (lines 31-33).
Horanaim is mentioned in Isaiah's prophecy against Moab (15:5). He says that fugitives would lament their destruction as they travelled the road to Horanaim. Jeremiah says much the same in 48:3, 5, and 47. The town is located south of the Arnon, but exactly where is a matter of conjecture. …”.
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But the location and identification of some of the places to which Mesha refers are, as a according to the above, “a matter of conjecture”.
No apparent mention here of “Bethel”, the town with which Hiel is associated. Earlier we referred to Dr. John Osgood’s view that Bethel was the same as Shechem – a town that we have found figuring importantly in the EA letters associated with Laba’yu, my Ahab.
Now, according to EA letter 289, written by Abdi-hiba of Jerusalem, Lab’ayu had actually given Shechem to the rebel hapiru: “Are we to act like Labaya when he was giving the land of Šakmu to the Hapiru?”
The cuneiform ideogram for the hapiru (or habiru) is SA GAZ which occurs in EA sometimes as Sa.Gaz.Mesh, which Velikovsky thought to relate to Mesha himself (Ages in Chaos, I, p. 275):
“… “sa-gaz”, which ideographically can also be read “habatu”, is translated “plunderers”, or “cutthroats”, or “rebellious bandits” … sometimes the text speaks of “gaz-Mesh” as a single person … and therefore here Mesh cannot be the suffix for the plural. I shall not translate Mesh … because it is the personal name of King Mesha …”.
King Mesha, unable to make any progress against Israel in the days of the powerful Omri, was able to make deep inroads into Israelite territory later, however, when he was powerfully backed (I think) by Ben-Hadad I and the Syrians (before Ahab had defeated them).
Ahab, as EA’s Lab’ayu, was pressurised to hand over to the invading rebels (hapiru) a large slice of his territory in the important Shechem region.
Since Shechem was also Bethel, this would be how Mesha - known variously as Hiel - would be connected with the Bethel which he must have occupied.
This is how he was able to build his Iron Age Jericho with Israelite labour.
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