The Moabite Stone

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 12, 1875

The Moabite Stone.

A VERY singular and striking confirmation of the truth of certain ancient Bible records has lately been brought to light. The land of Moab, lying east of the Jordan and Dead Sea, being under Turkish rule, and the authorities being jealous of all the movements of travelers, has been a land of mystery, and few and far between have been explorations of it. In 1866, Rev. F. A. Klein, a Prussian missionary at Jerusalem, traveling in Moab under the protection of an Arab Sheik, discovered a remarkable stone among the ruins of the ancient city of Dibon. The stone was originally three feet and five inches in height, and one foot nine inches in width and thickness, with an inscription of thirty-four lines.

It is believed that originally there were eleven hundred letters on the stone, but only six hundred and sixty-nine have been restored, as it was partially broken in pieces after curiosity concerning it had led the Arabs to suppose it valuable, and that money could be obtained for the separate pieces. The inscription was in the ancient characters used by the inhabitants of Moab, and having been deciphered by adepts in this species of lore, it is satisfactorily ascertained that the inscription is older than most of the Old Testament, and was without doubt made in the year that Elijah the prophet was translated to Heaven. It reads like a chapter in the Bible, and gives strong confirmation to the facts related in the inspired volume.

It has an age of at least twenty-seven hundred years, being the work of a people who dwelt in immediate contact with the people of Israel during the whole period of their marvelous history. The inscription narrates the achievements of King Mesha, the Moabite monarch who fought against Jehoram and Jehoshaphat, and speaks of the vessels of Jehovah taken from the captured Nebo and dedicated to Chemosh, the national deity of the conqueror. The inscription not only depicts the wars between Israel and Moab, so vividly pictured in the Old Testament, but strikingly illustrates the historical, geographical, and religious relations of these kingdoms. There are few occurrences more remarkable, even in this age of surprises, than the manner in which the Moabite stone has been awakened from the sleep of nearly three thousand years, to unfold the secrets of language and of history, and to confirm, by its emphatic testimony, the essential accuracy of the Book of books.