was to the court of the King of Moab that David entrusted his
parents when hard pressed by Saul. Possibly the Moabite prince was not
ill pleased to befriend the enemy of his own enemy, the King of Israel.

It had been better for the Moabites, however, had David never lived to
succeed Saul. The conquest of the Philistines by his troops was followed
by the conquest of Moab. The vanquished people were decimated, every
second man being mercilessly slain. So thoroughly was the country
subdued that it was more than a century before it ventured to break away
from its Israelitish master. After the disruption of Solomon's heritage
it fell to the share of the northern kingdom, though native kings once
more sat upon its throne. Now and again they revolted, to be brought
back to obedience, however, when Israel recovered its strength. Such was
the case when Omri founded his dynasty at Samaria; Moab again became a
dependency of the Israelitish monarch, and its ruler was forced to pay
tribute and homage to his over-lord. The tribute consisted in sheep, or
rather in their skins, which were tanned by the Israelites into leather,
while the fleeces upon them were woven into cloth. In the time of Ahab,
Mesha, the son of Chemosh-melech, sent each year 100,000 lambs and
100,000 rams.

Mesha subsequently succeeded in shaking off the foreign yoke. He has
left us a record of his victories, the so-called Moabite Stone, which
was discovered among the ruins of his capital, Dibon. The country north
of the Arnon was wrested from Israelitish hands, and the King of Israel,
in spite of help from Judah and Edom, failed to recover it. Moab was
permanently lost to the kingdom of Samaria. The Assyrian texts mention
some of its later rulers. One of them was Shalman, who may be the
spoiler of Beth-Arbel referred to by Hosea;[10] another was
Chemosh-nadab, the contemporary of Hezekiah.

Chemosh-nadab signifies "Chemosh is noble." Chemosh was the national god
of Moab, as Milcom or Ammi was of Ammon. Like Yahveh of Israel, he stood
alone, with no wife to share his divinity. So entirely, in fact, had the
conception of a goddess vanished from the mind of the Moabite, that, as
we learn from the Moabite Stone, the Babylonian Istar, the Ashtoreth of
Canaan, had been transformed into a male deity, and identified with
Chemosh. It was to Ashtar-Chemosh, Mesha tells us, and not to Ashtoreth,
that he devoted the captive women of Israel.

The older population, expelled