King Mesha of Moab's Capital was Jericho ("Qeriho"), not Dibon

Dibon-Gad Between the Torah and the Mesha Stele In the southern Transjordanian Mishor (plateau), an area that changed hands between Israelites and Moabites, there once lived two neighboring tribes, Gadites and Dibonites… Dr.Yigal Levin https://www.thetorah.com/article/dibon-gad-between-the-torah-and-the-mesha-stele Source Critical Approach One possible approach, which might solve why Dibon is called “Dibon-Gad” only in Num 33, is to suggest that Num 32 and Num 33 are derived from two different sources, each from a different time and each reflecting a different point of view. Levine, for example, points out that the route of Num 33 is very different than that described in either what he calls the JE narratives or that described by the “priestly historiographers,” agreeing more with “the writings of the Deuteronomist.”[13] Milgrom, in an excursus to his commentary, suggested that the itinerary of Num 33 is not only a unified text, but that it is actually “the master list from which the individual itineraries in the narratives [of Exodus-Numbers – Y.L.] were drawn.”[14] Building on this, Koert van Bekkum has more recently claimed that the whole chapter is indeed a very early composition, which “contains at least some information from the late second millennium BCE.”[15] If we view Numbers 33 as a unique source, we can suggest that its author, whenever and for whatever purpose he actually wrote his itinerary, wished to emphasize the specific connection between the town of Dibon and the tribe of Gad. But why? Dibon and Gad in the Mesha Stele One source that may help us answer this question is the Mesha Stele, in which both Dibon and Gad are mentioned. Dibon itself is mentioned in the stele four times. The first of these in the preamble, in which Mesha introduces himself as מלך מאב הדיבני, “the king of Moab, the Dibonite.”[16] The second is in line 21, in which Mesha narrates that he captured Yahatz לספת על דיבן, “to add to Dibon.” The third and fourth times are in line 28, א]ש דבן חמשן כי כל דיבן משמעת] – “the men of Dibon were armed, for all Dibon [is/was/are/were] under my command.” Since the very beginning of the study of the stele, it has been assumed that Dibon was the name of Mesha’s capital city, and its identification with Dhiban, where the stele was actually found, was taken for granted. Dibon as a Tribe About a dozen years ago, Eveline J. Van der Steen and Klaas A.D. Smelik proposed, that “Dibon” in the Mesha Stele does not refer to a town by that name, but rather to the “tribe” of which Mesha was chief.[17] His capital was not called Dibon but “Qorḥoh,” the building of which is described in detail in lines 21 to 26 of the stele. Scholars who assume that the city’s name was Dibon have tried to understand the term Qorḥoh as a reference to the “acropolis” or “royal quarter” of Dibon, but the stele suggests that it was a city. According to Van der Steen and Smelik, only in later generations did the name of the tribe, Dibon, become the name of their chief town, and this is how it was remembered in the Bible.[18] e tribe, Dibon, become the name of their chief town, and this is how it was remembered in the Bible.[18] Mesha Before the War Mesha’s rebellion against Israel is recorded both in the Bible (2 Kings 3) and on the stele. We don’t know what his status was before this rebellion and we also don’t really know the extent of his territory once he succeeded in carving one out, or who its inhabitants really were. The picture that we often deduce from the Bible, of “Moabites” living south of the Arnon and “Israelites” living to the north, is way too simple.[19] The very fact that Mesha, even before his rebellion and “conquest” (or, to him, “liberation”) of the Mishor, calls himself a “Dibonite,” means that there was at least one tribal group living in the area of the southern Mishor, which felt a connection to the Moabite identity, perhaps living under the thumb of the kingdom of Israel. But the Dibonites were not the only tribe living on this strip of land; the Gadites lived there as well. Lines 10–11 of the Mesha Stele read: ואש. גד. ישב. בארצ. עטרת. מעלמ. ויבנ. לה. מלכ. ישראל. את. עטרת | ואלתחמ. בקר. ואחזה | ואהרג. את. כל. העם And [the] men/man of Gad dwelt in the land of Ataroth fromever, and the king of Israel built Ataroth for himself. And I fought against the city and captured it. And I killed all of the inhabitants. This is the only contemporaneous extra-biblical reference that we know of to any of the biblical tribes of Israel (Judah is mentioned as a kingdom, not as a tribe). Ataroth is only a few kilometers west of Dibon, and both are listed as Gadite towns in Num 32:34, one after another, which at first glance makes the Mesha Stele and the biblical record tally well. But if we read the above text carefully, we can see that Mesha does not call Gad “Israel.” He claims, that while Gad had “always” lived in “the land of Ataroth,” at some point “the king of Israel” came and “built” (fortified?) Ataroth. In other words, this suggests that Gad was a native Transjordanian tribe that had been “conquered” by the king of Israel. Fluid Identity or Polemic? In his “The Tribe of Gad and the Mesha Inscription” (TheTorah.com 2013), Aaron Koller cited the Mesha inscription as evidence of a “fluidity of identity” among the Gadites, who may have sometimes considered themselves “Israelite,” sometimes “Moabite,” and sometimes something else. This may be true, but what seems clear is that Gadites and Dibonites were neighboring tribes; the former saw themselves—or at least were seen by the biblical authors—as part of the Israelite orbit (by force or by choice) while the latter saw themselves—or at least were seen by Mesha—as Moabite (though they too may have been dominated by Israel for a while). This situation may be what is behind the polemical nature of the texts involved, namely the Mesha Stele and the biblical text. The Mesha Stele, whatever its specific genre (this is debated by scholars), is definitely a piece of political propaganda. Its purpose is to portray Mesha as a Kemosh-driven savior of the Moabites from their enemies, chief of which was Israel under Omri and his sons. His presentation of Gad as a native tribe that was “conquered” by Israel and “liberated” by himself is part of this polemic. We should remember this before accepting its claims as “historical fact.” The Bible is hardly free of such political polemics either,[20] and this may be what we are seeing here. We do not really know when the itinerary of Num 33 was written, or whether the unique reference to “Gad” was included in the original text. But when it was included, it was included for a reason. Perhaps that reason was to highlight the fact that “the men of Gad did indeed dwell in Dibon fromever”—and as far as the biblical writers were concerned, they were Israelite!