The Historians' History of the World 02

The idea that the Israelites conquered the country north of Arnon as early as the days of Moses must be given up as unhistorical. It is derived from an uncritical application of Numbers ii. From this chapter the inference is usually drawn that an Amorite invasion of Moab had taken place shortly before the time of Moses. They are supposed to have conquered all the northern half of Moab and the farther side of Jordan and then to have been defeated and destroyed by Moses. The groundwork of the passage in Numbers xxi. is a narrative taken from the Elohistic text xxi. 4-9, 12-18, 21-25, 27, 30. According to this, there existed in the time of Moses a kingdom of the Amorites (i.e. Canaanites) under a king named Sihon, to the north of Arnon, between that river and the Jabbok, and bordered on the east by the land of the Ammonites. Verse 26 is warrant that this king Sihon had taken his country from the Moabites. But this verse is an interpolation which interrupts the continuity of vv. 25 and 27, and is intended to bring the view of the Elohistic text into line with that which prevailed elsewhere, and according to which these districts belonged to Moab.

In support of the opinion that this district was invested from the Moabites in the time of Moses, the Elohistic text refers to an ancient song, probably taken from the Book of the Wars of Jehovah. In vv. 27-30 he says, “wherefore they that speak in proverbs say:

‘Come into Heshbon, let the city of Sihon be built and prepared:

For there is a fire gone out of Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon:

It hath consumed Ar of Moab, and the lords of the high places of Arnon.

Woe to thee, Moab! thou art undone, O people of Chemosh:

He hath given his sons that escaped, and his daughters into captivity, (unto Sihon, king of the Amorites.)

We have shot at them; Heshbon is perished even unto Dibon.’”

But this song contradicts at all points the statement which the Elohistic text brings it forward to verify. King Sihon, who was conquered according to the song, is rather a king of the Moabites, and his conquerors, who in the introduction are invited to settle in conquered cities, are obviously Israelites, since the invitation comes in an Israelite song. The “Sihon, king of the Amorites” put in brackets above, is proved by its incompatibility with the whole tenor of the song to be a gloss, interpolated for the purpose of bringing it into harmony with the presuppositions of v. 26. The song is a poem, composed on the occasion of such an inroad from the north into Moabite territory north of the Arnon, as the inscription of Mesha describes.

Hence it is out of the question that Israel should have settled in northern Moab after the conquest of an Amorite king, Sihon by name, at a period anterior to the migration into the land west of Jordan. The settlement took place much later, and Sihon, king of the Amorites, whom Moses is supposed to have conquered, came into being by a misinterpretation of the song just quoted.

This same settlement of Israel in the northern half of Moab was temporary only. According to Isaiah xv.-xvi. the whole region north of Arnon, which Numbers xxi. represents to us as having been conquered by Moses and which the Fundamental Writing gives to Reuben, is part of the kingdom of Moab. Jeremiah xlviii. also names the cities north of Arnon as Moabite. Hence, in the region between the northern margin of the Dead Sea and the Arnon, the conflict between the two cognate nations of Moab and Israel surged to and fro for centuries. And probably the immediate object of each was the possession of the walled cities. They must have been held first by one nation and then by the other. The country population may have changed less; it fled before the invading foe and submitted to the victor. A large proportion of it was probably Moabite even while Israel was in temporary possession of the cities. And this was, of course, even more the case when the whole of Moab was tributary to Israel.

All the hatred of Israel for the kindred tribe of Moab that defended its territory and won back their conquests from them finds expression in the legend that Moab and the people of Ammon took their rise from the incestuous intercourse of Lot with his daughters (Genesis xix. 30 seq.). The bias of the whole legend is betrayed by its ignorance of the names of the daughters. It is obviously nothing but a malicious travesty of the view that made the Moabites sons of Lot (Deuteronomy ii., ix., xix.).