Moabites

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Moabites were a people who lived east of the Dead Sea and south of the Arnon .

history

After changeable clashes with the Israelites, the Moabites were defeated by the northern kingdom of Israel under the Omri dynasty and apparently stayed until around 850 BC. When the Moabite king Mescha shook off the supremacy of Israel and conquered a contiguous area from the northern to the southern tip of the Dead Sea .

In written sources outside the Bible, they first appear in the 13th century BC. On an Egyptian inscription. Around 720 BC The Moabites were defeated by the Assyrians . Soon afterwards they disappeared from the springs, they probably went up in the Nabataeans and other desert peoples.

religion

The main god of the Moabites was Kemosch , from whom their kings were derived (King Mescha called himself "son of Kemosch", Numbers 21:29  EU ). They also worshiped the Baal-Peor , apparently a regional variation of the Canaanite god Ba'al . A Moabite inscription mentions the seer Balaam, also mentioned in the Bible .

Biblical representation

origin

According to the representation in the Tanakh , the Moabites were the descendants of Moab , a son of Lot . The conception of Moab, however, is not described very credibly in the Bible. According to Genesis 19: 30-38  EU , Lot's daughters made their father drunk and seduced him when he was drunk. The older daughter became pregnant and gave birth to Moab. The younger followed the example and came to a son whom she named Ben-Ammi , he became the progenitor of the Ammonites . Since Lot was a nephew of Abraham , the two brother peoples are related to the Hebrews and Israelites , respectively .

Role in land acquisition

The attempt of the Moabites to induce the Israelites, who are staying in the land of the Moabites on their passage to Canaan, to a kind of acculturation by mixing the peoples ("... to whore with the daughters of the Moabites") and religions ( Num 25.2  EU : " They invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods ”), angered the Israelite god YHWH so much that he brought an unspecified plague on the people of Israel (cf. Ps 106 : 29-31  EU ), the 24,000 men ( Num. 25, 9  EU ). According to the biblical description, this plague did not cease until the grandson of the first high priest Aaron, Phinehas , tried the particularly provocative attempt to sleep by the Israelite Zimri ("in front of the eyes of Moses and the whole community") through a kind of exemplary execution in flagranti (according to Jewish legal understanding) "in whose tent" ended in a public manner.

It was "in the land of Moab" ( Dtn 29 ff.  EU ), where YHWH - in addition to the covenant on Mount Horeb - made a second covenant with the people of Israel. In the context of this second covenant, Joshua is appointed as successor to Moses , and there, "in the land of Moab", the five books of Moses also end.

On the migration of the Israelites to the promised land , according to the Bible ( Dtn 34.5  EU ) , Moses died in the land of the Moabites, probably on Mount Nebo and was buried “in the valley opposite Bet-Pegor ”. According to the biblical story, no one has ever found a concrete grave.

Relationship to the people of Israel

The Moabites are almost always mentioned in the Bible as opponents of the Israelites, which may have something to do with the cult of Baal that prevailed among them . Nevertheless, the Moabite Ruth ( Book of Ruth ) was the great-grandmother of King David ( Ruth 4.17  EU .20-22 EU ; cf. 1 Sam 22.3-4 EU ) and thus a tribal mother of  the family of David. However, the decisive factor is probably not the ethnic origin, but the loyalty and loyalty of Ruth.

See also

literature