Biblical Nations - Ammonites

Ammonites

Key Scripture: Genesis 19:36-38

Figures: Ben-Ammi, Nahash, Hanun, Naamah, Baalis, Tobiah

Last week we learned about one of Israel's related neighbors named Edom, the descendants of Jacob's brother Esau.  Today we'll study the first of two other people groups who lived nearby and shared a similar ancestry with the Hebrew people, and this time their origin story isn't very pretty.  If there were a musical equivalent to the banjo in the 18th century BC, it would surely be a fitting instrument for the background music for the incestuous history of the Ammonites.  Hailing from just across the Jordan River, the people of Ammon may have been cousins of Israel's descendants but they were wicked, idolatrous, and rarely friendly.  They did play several important roles throughout the Old Testament, however, so let's jump in and see what we can learn about them. 

When Abraham left his family, the only relative who is recorded to have come with him and Sarah was Lot, the son of his deceased brother by the name of Haran.  After the young man grew and acquired many possessions he separated from his uncle, settling in Sodom near the modern Dead Sea and raising a family of his own.  Saved by angels from God's destruction of the entire region, Lot escaped with only his two grown daughters and lived in a cave overlooking the small town of Zoar.  It was here that the two ladies, who had lost their husbands and believed there were no remaining men in the land who could raise up children with them, decided to get their father drunk in order to get pregnant by him.  Their plan worked and the younger of the two named her son Ben-Ammi, the father of the nation of Ammon.

By the time of the Exodus, the nomadic offspring of Lot remained east of the Dead Sea and had become powerful enough to uproot the Rephaim - interestingly, God told Moses that the wandering horde was not to fight with the Ammonites because He had given land to Lot's descendants and had driven out the tall (giant?) inhabitants before them.  Therefore when the Amorite kings were defeated to Ammon's north, the pre-existing border remained unchanged with the new Hebrew inhabitants.  That said, the Ammonites were not friendly nor hospitable to their neighbors during their years of wandering, and that coupled with their child-sacrificing worship of Milcom and Molech was reason enough to ban them from entering the Israelite assembly upon their settlement in the Promised Land.  Despite being left alone, however, Ammon was one of the first nations to oppress Israel during the time of the judges as they joined forces with an invading Moabite king named Eglon who crossed the Jordan to assume control of the region for 18 years before God raised up Ehud to kill him.  An unnamed Ammonite king came some 180 years later to once again conquer the disobedient Israelites until Jephthah intervened.  The Ammonites claimed that Israel had taken their land during the time of Moses and that they would reclaim it by force.  Jephthah correctly responded that no Ammonite land was claimed, that Israel simply took the Amorite land of Sihon and Og, and that they would not yield to the threat of war.  Unfortunately, the tribe of Ephraim was angered by Jephthah's victory over Ammon, and their violent response resulted in a civil war that cost some 32,000 lives.

Many Israelite kings had interactions with Ammon as well, beginning with the very start of Saul's kingdom.  King Nahash marched against Jabesh-gilead, a city east of the Jordan inhabited by the tribe of Gad, and cruelly insisted that surrender would result in every male having his right eye gouged out.  Saul rallied an army and rushed to their aid, winning a tremendous surprise victory and securing his position as the first king of a unified Israel.  Surprisingly, this same Nahash had a positive relationship with David, so when he died and his son Hanun became the king of Ammon, David sent ambassadors to console the new leader.  Convinced that they were spies, however, Hanun humiliated the messengers and hired an army of Syrians to fight against the Hebrews under the command of Joab and his brother, Abishai.  It was during this conflict that David remained in Jerusalem and ended up impregnating Bathsheba, had her husband Uriah murdered, and then took her as his own wife.  Interestingly, King Hanun's own brother seems to have remained loyal to David, as Shobi the son of Nahash is one of the men who brought supplies and aid to the king as he fled from Absalom's attempted coup several years later.

It was King Solomon who broke God's commands regarding Ammonite women, however, as one of his wives was Naamah.  Hailing from Ammon, she did not give up her worship of Milcom and was one of the many wives who incited Solomon to build alters to foreign gods and turned his heart away from the God of his ancestors.  She was the mother of Rehoboam, under whom the united kingdom was permanently divided into two.  As an ancestor over the line of Davidic kings, it is interesting to note that she is in the lineage of Jesus Christ, although her name is never mentioned in any of the genealogies found in the New Testament.  Two of Judah's good kings also encountered Ammon in battle, including Jehoshaphat who appealed to God for deliverance because He had not allowed the children of Israel to defeat the Ammonites and drive them out during the Exodus, as well as Jotham the son of Uzziah.

Several prophets spoke about the future of Ammon and its capital city, Rabbah.  God had Ezekiel mark out a path at the fork in the road, one way leading to Jerusalem and the other to Rabbah, where the king of Babylon was to use divination to determine which direction to attack.  Nebuchadnezzar ultimately destroyed Judah and installed his own governor named Gedaliah in place of the Davidic line of kings, but another Ammonite king named Baalis successfully arranged for his assassination.  After the Babylonian captivity, Nehemiah returned from Susa with permission from King Artaxerxes to rebuild Jerusalem's walls and an Ammonite named Tobiah was one of the primary opponents to the work.  Despite his efforts, the wall was quickly and successfully raised in less than two months.  At that time, all of the Jewish citizens in the region put away their wives from Ammon and Moab (a practice forbidden by Mosaic law).  Very little is known about the Ammonites after this point in time, other than how they were soundly defeated by Judas Maccabeus in the 2nd century BC or than early Christian writer Justin Martyr recorded that they existed in substantial numbers as late as the 2nd century AD.  At some point the Ammonites were lost to history, likely absorbed into the surrounding cultures, and are no longer an identifiable group.