Cursed by Yahweh?

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In March, a research team led by scholars from the Associates for Biblical Research (ABR) announced the discovery of a lead tablet from Mt. Ebal that contains a Hebrew inscription. They say the inscription, dated to the end of the Late Bronze Age (c. 1200 B.C.E.), is a curse text that invokes the deity Yahweh. The team believes the tablet to be the oldest extant Hebrew inscription. Questions abound, however, and some scholars have expressed doubts about the team’s sensational claims.

The tablet comes from the West Bank site of Mt. Ebal, first excavated by archaeologist Adam Zertal in the 1980s. Zertal interpreted the site to be the location of Joshua’s altar (Joshua 8:30).^a The tablet was recovered only in 2019, however, when the ABR team began to sift the soil dumps from the Mt. Ebal excavation.

The lead tablet, which measures less than 1 square inch, appears to have been folded in half after being written. It was readable only with advanced digital scanning, which was carried out by the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. Although images of the scans have not been released, the ABR team says that the inside contains 40 letters written in four lines of text. As translated by the team, the tablet reads: “Cursed, cursed, cursed—cursed by the God Yhw. You will die cursed. Cursed you will surely die. Cursed by Yhw—cursed, cursed, cursed.” The team believes the inscription may directly connect to the covenant renewal ceremony on Mt. Ebal, described in Deuteronomy 27 and Joshua 8.

Some scholars remain skeptical about the tablet’s contents, however, since the team has provided very little written or visual documentation to support their reading. As Christopher Rollston, an epigrapher from the George Washington University, notes, “I would predict that almost all of the readings posited [by the team] will be vigorously contested, once scholars in the field of epigraphy are allowed to see the image.” The ABR team says it plans to publish a peer-reviewed article on the find later this year.