“Agriculture might be made a means of improving the condition of the Arabs; indeed, the only other method of attaining this end would be to civilize them off the face of the earth altogether. By Arab I mean the Bedawi, the typical son of Ishmael, ‘whose hand is against every man,’ and who is as much hated and feared in the towns and villages of Central Arabia as in Palestine. Wherever he goes, he brings with him ruin, violence, and neglect. To call him a ‘son of the desert’ is a misnomer; half the desert owes its existence to him, and many a fertile plain from which he has driven its useful and industrious inhabitants becomes in his hands, like the ‘South Country,’ a parched and barren wilderness. He has a constitutional dislike to work, and is entirely unscrupulous as to the means he employs to live without it; these qualities (which also adorn and make the thief and burglar of civilization) he mistakes for evidences of thorough breeding, and prides himself accordingly upon being one of Nature’s gentlemen.” (pp. 240, 241, 243).
There are so many dens and caves and strongholds in the mountains of Moab that it would be next to impossible for the government to rid herself of these Arab clans. I am told that now, and for many years past, the most powerful of all these lawless tribes is the one called Beni Sukrh, whose head quarters are the famous city and fortress of Kerak. This stronghold is situated on the banks and near the mouth of the river Arnon, which empties into the Dead Sea on the west side, and about fifteen miles from its north end. This clan some years ago captured Canon Tristram and party, and exacted from them a large sum of money as a ransom. In his “Land of Moab” Tristram has given a peculiarly striking description of the fortress Kerak, in which he, himself, was prisoner. It is built on an isolated rock which rises high in the air, and whose level summit is surrounded on all sides but the eastern by chasms from 800 to 1,000 feet deep, and 100 feet wide, with perpendicular sides. A well-built wall surrounds the brow of the precipice on all sides, and the only two places of entrance are through arches tunneled in the solid rock from the side of the precipice to the level within. These narrow and well-guarded entrances are approached by rock-hewn paths, barely wide enough for men or asses to walk on in single file. This is one of the most impregnable strongholds on earth. Gibraltar is not to be compared with it. In this citadel one could safely say:
“I will not be afraid of death and bane
Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.”
This is the Kir-Hareseth of Scripture, and here it was that Mesha, King of Moab, took refuge after his army was destroyed by the combined forces of Israel, Judah, and Edom. These three kings cut Mesha’s army to pieces, but they knew it was folly to besiege his castle. Coming to this, they gave up in despair and went home. After their departure, Mesha, filled with gratitude for the safety that this fortress afforded him, “took his eldest son, that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall.”
Probably it would be well in this connection to mention a celebrated stone that I saw in a museum in Paris. Do you ask, “Why introduce that stone here?” Because this is the proper place to introduce it. It is the famous Moabite Stone that was found among the ruins of Dhiban not many miles from this place. Dhiban (the Dibon of Scripture), situated on two hills, is now only a ruined village, although the numerous traces of buildings existing in the community indicate that it was once a flourishing town. In 1868 Rev. F. A. Klein, a missionary of the English church, while digging amid the rubbish of Dhiban, made the fortunate discovery. This basaltic rock, two by three feet in size, with one side covered by a Moabite inscription, has a strange history and tells a wonderful tale.
When the stone was discovered a great ado was made over it. The Prussian government sought and obtained permission to remove it. The Bedouin tribe in whose territory it was found was offered an enormous sum of money to part with it. Indeed, the amount offered was so great that the Arabs thought the stone must be of untold value. The news spread. Another tribe near by, hearing of the new-found stone and the great price offered for it, marched over and claimed it as their own. As about the “Slave Stone,” a quarrel and a war ensued between the tribes, during which many men were slaughtered on both sides. The Stone was broken, but afterwards the pieces were put together, and the inscription was translated.
“The inscription,” says Prof. Palmer, “commemorates the reign of a certain Mesha, King of Moab, and records the triumphs obtained by him over Israel in the course of a long and sanguinary struggle. It begins by setting forth his name and titles, and briefly recounts his successful effort to throw off the yoke of the King of Israel; then follows a list of bloody battles fought, of towns wrested from the enemy, and of spoil and captives fallen into his hands. For these conquests he returns solemn thanks to Chemosh, his god—‘the abomination of Moab’—and glories with a religious fervor, that sounds strangely to our ears, in having despoiled the sanctuary of Jehovah.”
The inscription concludes by setting forth the names of towns rebuilt or fortified by the Moabite king, of altars raised to Chemosh, of wells and cisterns dug, and other peaceful work accomplished. This portion of the record is a most valuable addition to our knowledge of sacred geography; for the names, as given on the Moabite Stone, engraved by one who knew them in his daily life, are, in nearly every case, absolutely identical with those found in the Bible itself and testify to the wonderful integrity with which the Scriptures have been preserved. So far we have the history of King Mesha’s rebellion from his own Moabite point of view, and so far we read of nothing but his success; but, if we turn to 2 Kings III: 5-27, we may look upon the other side of the picture. In that passage we have a concise but vivid account of the rebellion and temporary successes against Israel of this same monarch. There we learn how the allied kings of Israel, Judah and Edom, went against the rebellious prince; how they marched by way of Edom, that is, round by the southern end of the Dead Sea; how they devastated the land of Moab, and drove their foeman to take refuge in his fortress of Kir-Haraseth, in Wady Kerak. The passage referred to above speaks of the author of the Dhiban inscription in the following terms:
“And Mesha, King of Moab, was a sheep-master, and rendered unto the King of Israel an hundred thousand lambs and an hundred thousand rams with wool.” (2 Kings III: 4). Here, again, the Bible receives fresh confirmation from geographical facts; Moab, with its extensive grass-covered uplands, is even now an essentially sheepbreeding country, although the “fenced cities and folds for sheep,” of which mention is made in the Book of Numbers (XXXII: 36), are all in ruins. But in its palmier days, when those rich pastures were covered with flocks, no more appropriate title could have been given to the king of such a country than that he “was a sheep-master.”
In this same mountainous region, about six miles north of Kerak, near the head of a deep wady which empties into the Dead Sea, is situated Machaerus, where the head-man’s ax ended the earthly life of John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ. Machaerus, like Kerak, is a natural fortress—one of Nature’s strongholds. Josephus describes it as follows: “The nature of the place was very capable of affording the surest hopes of safety to those that possessed it, as well as delay and fear to those that should attack it; for what was walled in was itself a very rocky hill, elevated to a very great height, which circumstance alone made it very hard to be subdued. It was also so contrived by nature that it could not be easily ascended; for it is, as it were, ditched about with such valleys on all sides, and to such a depth, that the eye can not reach their bottoms, and such as are not easily to be passed over, and even such as it is impossible to fill up with earth. For that valley which cuts it on the west extends to three score furlongs; on the same side it was also that Machaerus had the tallest top of its hill elevated above the rest. But then for the valleys that lay on the north and south sides, although they be not so large as that already described, yet it is in like manner an impracticable thing to think of getting over them; and for the valley that lies on the east side, its depth is found to be no less than a hundred cubits. It extends as far as a mountain that lies over against Machaerus, with which it is bounded. Herod built a wall round on top of the hill, and erected towers at the corners a hundred and sixty cubits high; in the middle of which place he built a palace, after a magnificent manner, wherein were large and beautiful edifices. He also made a great many reservoirs for the reception of water, that there might be plenty of it ready for all uses” (Wars VI: 1-2).