Ammon

Ammon, the land of the “sons of Ammon,” lay on the Transjordan plateau east of Gilead, between the Jabbok and the desert, bordering Moab to the south and the Israelite tribes to the west. Like Moab it sprang from Lot: its ancestor was Ben-ammi, born to Lot’s younger daughter after the destruction of Sodom (Genesis 19:38). Its capital was Rabbah (Rabbath-Ammon, the modern Amman), and its national god was Milcom, or Molech, to whom children were offered in fire.

Because of the kinship through Lot, Israel was forbidden to harass Ammon in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 2:19); yet Ammon proved a persistent enemy. The Ammonites oppressed Israel in the days of the judges until Jephthah the Gileadite defeated them (Judges 11:32–33). Nahash the Ammonite besieged Jabesh-gilead and threatened to gouge out every right eye, which roused Saul to his first victory (1 Samuel 11:1–11). When David sent envoys of kindness to Hanun son of Nahash, the king shamed them, provoking the war in which Joab besieged and David took Rabbah (2 Samuel 10:1–4; 2 Samuel 12:26–29).

Ammon’s idolatry snared even Solomon, who built a high place for Milcom (1 Kings 11:5; 1 Kings 11:7), and the worship of Molech with its child sacrifice drew the prophets’ rebuke. For their cruelty, their gloating over Judah’s fall, and their seizing of Israel’s land, Amos, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Zephaniah pronounced judgment on Ammon and Rabbah (Amos 1:13–15; Jeremiah 49:1–6; Ezekiel 25:1–7; Zephaniah 2:8–11). After the exile Tobiah the Ammonite opposed Nehemiah’s rebuilding of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 4:3).

Yet even Ammon is not beyond the reach of mercy. Jeremiah’s oracle of doom ends with a promise to “restore the fortunes of the Ammonites” (Jeremiah 49:6), a hint that the God who judges the nations also means to gather them. In Christ the dividing wall of hostility is broken down, so that even the old enemies on Israel’s borders may be brought near by his blood (Ephesians 2:13–14).