DIBON - l. A city E. of the Dead Sea and N. of the Arnon, in the land which, before the coming of the Israelites, Sihon, the king of the Amorites, had taken from a former king of Moab (Nu.21.26, 30). The tradition in Jos (13.9, 17) states that the Hebrews dispossessed Sihon, and the territory was assigned to Reuben. Dibon, however, is mentioned as among the places built (or rebuilt) by Gad (Nu.32.3, 34), hence the name Dibon-gad (Nu.33.45). It was taken by Moab under King Mesha, who was of a family of Dibon apparently, and is mentioned several times in his famous stele, which was actually discovered at Dhiban, about 2 miles N. of 'Ar'a'ir on the edge of the Arnon valley (Wadi el-Mujib). Dibon is noted in Is.15.2 and Jer.48.18, 22 as a Moabite town. The large mound of Dhiban has recently been excavated, but, though abundant Nabataean and Roman remains were found, little was found of the Iron Age except tombs from the 9th cent. onwards. Glueck's surface exploration, however, has discovered Early Iron Age potsherds NE. of the main area of excavation, and it is evident that Moabite Dibon was situated at the southern extremity of the fertile corn-land.
In Is.15.9 AV and RV follow the Hebrew in reading Dimon, while RSV has Dibon. The form Dimon may have been used here for the word play with 'blood' (dam).
2. A town in Judah inhabited in Nehemiah's time by returned exiles (Neh.11.25). Its association with Kiriath-arba (Hebron) indicates its location, but since there is no mention of Dibon in the description of the territory of Judah and Caleb in Jos.15, we may suspect textual corruption of some other name, possibly Debir (Kiriath-sepher) or Dimonah (Jos.15.22). [Article: Dictionary of the Bible, J.Hastings, 2nd Ed., T&T.Clark, 1963. - J.Or.]
DIBON-GAD - See DIBON, 1.
MESHA - A king of Moab in the 9th cent. BC. He was a tributary of Ahab of Israel, but rebelled at the death of the latter. Jehoram mobilized for war and Jehosha-phat of Judah joined in the campaign, as did the king of Edom. The prophet Elisha was with the Israelite army. The siege of Kir-hareseth (el-Kerak) could not be prosecuted to a successful conclusion (2 K.3). The whole situation gained new vividness through the accidental discovery on the surface of the ground at Dhiban (ruined site of Dibon) of a stela of King Mesha himself. It was found by a German missionary named Klein in 1868. . Unhappily a rivalry ensued to get possession of the stone, and this led the Arabs to break it up and sell the pieces. A squeeze made before this happened has made possible the restoration of some of the lacunae, and the patched together monument is in the Louvre. Strange to say there was debate about whether the inscription was not a forgery. The stela was dedicated to the Moabite God Chemosh and was evidently raised up after Mesha had successfully maintained his independence. It records that Omri had subjected the Medeba territory. Ataroth, still farther S., had apparently been held by the Israelite tribe of Gad in the face of the rise of Moabite power under Mesha's father Chemosh-melech. That king had succeeded in pushing as far as Medeba. Mesha calls himself the Dibonite (cf how the Edomite king list mentions the places where the kings came from, Gn.36.31-39). His stela was erected at a new high-place at the city he built - the otherwise unknown Krhh. The stone, therefore, must have later been brought to Dibon for reasons unknown. Israelite prisoners had to hew out the cisterns for the new town. Mesha carried on a war of extermination against some Israelite cities, such as Ataroth, Nebo and no doubt Jahaz, in the case of which this is not explicitly said. The text is translated in ANET, pp. 320 f. [Article: Dictionary of the Bible, J.Hastings, 2nd Ed., T&T.Clark, 1963. - E.G.K.]