Mesha

(safe) (2 Kings 3:4) — a king of Moab, who refused to pay Jehoram, king of Israel, the annual tribute he had regularly paid to his father Ahab. Jehoram resolved to punish him for this, and to this end, forming an alliance with Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, and the king of Edom, invaded the territory of Mesha, defeated him, laid waste his land, and finally besieged the fortified city of Kir-hareseth, in which the defeated king had taken refuge with the remnant of his army. In this extremity Mesha attempted to break through the enemy forces, but failed, and in his desperation resolved to appease his angered gods, as he supposed, by a terrible sacrifice: he offered up his firstborn son, the heir to the throne, as a burnt offering upon the city wall.

This aroused great indignation among the Israelites, and they withdrew from him and returned to their own land (2 Kings 3). In relatively recent times, namely in 1868, in the region east of the Jordan, on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, near the city of Dibon, or Divon, a remarkable ancient monument, the so-called Moabite Stone, was discovered by a German traveler, on which, in ancient Phoenician characters, are recorded many details about this king of Moab, including, among other things, the event described above.