The destruction of the Amalekites (1 Sam 15:1-3)
1 Sam 15:1-3
The incident of Saul commanded by God to destroy the Amalekites sounds dangerously like genocide and is deeply troubling. How could God require such a thing? This is the kind of scenario that gives the Old Testament a bad name and casts doubt on God’s character. While there are no easy answers to these concerns, we need to avoid some pitfalls in our interpretation. We should note that the OT writer is not worried about the questions that we pose. This is not to deny their validity, but to realise that our perspective is alien to Scripture’s point of view here and we must not allow our concerns to skew the interpretation. For instance, some commentators give the impression that Saul was right to defy God’s command, or that Samuel misinterpreted it, or even looked for an excuse to get rid of Saul as king. In these readings, Saul features as a hero who exercises modern sensibilities and humanitarian concern when he shows mercy. However, God’s Word gives no indication that Samuel is acting from an ulterior motive and it unequivocally condemns Saul (1 Sam 15:35). When we override Scripture’s concerns and re-shape its message according to what we think is right, we effectively sit in judgment over it and undermine its authority as God’s Word.
To understand the severe judgment on Amalek, we need to return to Israel’s encounter with them after the exodus. The Amalekites were nomads who wandered around in the Negev desert, a region east of Egypt and in the southern area of Canaan. They attacked Israel at a time when the latter was a small and vulnerable people group, recently released from slavery and unaccustomed to warfare (Exod 17:8-16). Deuteronomy further explains that the Amalekites particularly targeted the stragglers and the weak and thus showed no fear of God for which Israel was to exercise God’s judgment on them later (Deut 25:17-19). The expression ‘fear of God’ is used of people who recognise that God or the gods (the Hebrew Elohim can mean either) are watching human behaviour even when no one else is looking. Therefore, someone who fears the deity (i.e. shows reverence and respect) will not take advantage of those who are weak and cannot defend themselves (e.g. Lev 19:14). This is the kind of minimum moral standard that is accepted even among pagans.[1] Thus the Amalekites are judged not on Israel’s higher moral standards but simply on what could be expected outside of God’s people as just or fair treatment.
Another issue that raises alarm bells for us are the references to utter destruction that includes men, women, children, as well as animals (1 Sam 15:3). The Hebrew term for this is ḥerem, which means ‘to put under the ban’, i.e. remove from human use and interaction. In some contexts, there are overtones of sacrificial language when something/one is given over to God and often destroyed (hence the translation in places ‘to devote to destruction’ – Lev 27:28-29). In Saul’s case, we are told that he ‘utterly destroyed’ (lit. made ḥerem) all the people except Agag (1 Sam 15:8-9). However, it cannot be a literal annihilation of everybody because the Amalekites remain an ongoing presence in Israel’s story hundreds of years after Saul (11th century BC). David fights against them (1 Sam 27:8) and they, in turn, kidnap Israelite women while David and his men are away (1 Sam 30:1-1-2). We still hear of them in Hezekiah’s time (1 Chron 4:43), in the 8th century BC. Finally, the sworn enemy of the Jews in the Persian period (5th century BC) is Haman, the Agagite (i.e. the descendant of Agag, king of the Amalekites) whose plans to exterminate the Jews backfires in the story of Esther (Esth 7:10; 8:3). Thus, the emphatic language in Saul’s story suggests a definitive smashing of opposition rather than wholesale extermination.
The reference to women and children being killed is understandably troubling for us heightened by the individualism that permeates Western thinking, but we should bear in mind that much of the OT operates with a corporate view. Thus, Rahab’s faith in Israel’s God saves her whole family when the Israelites conquer the land, while Achan’s sin of stealing items dedicated to God lead to the whole family being judged and destroyed (Josh 6:25; 7:24-25). In other words, the actions of one family member could have its rewards as well as its repercussions on the larger unit. The connection for Israelites would have been a lot clearer given that the family unit was much more closely knit then than it is now. Thus, the religion of the head of the family would largely determine the religion of the rest (see also the NT, Acts 16:31), while in financial matters, those in debt or poverty could not rely on state help, only on other members of the family. Further, women rarely earned an income and were more dependent on male family members. Thus, a corporate view made better sense to ancient Israelites, though closer to the Babylonian exile it was increasingly questioned by them, too (e.g. Jer 31:29-30; Ezek 18:1-23). Additionally, we should note that Scripture does not tell us whether women and children were killed. The command is all-encompassing because it wants to emphasise a stance of no compromise, but like the language of utter destruction, it does not necessarily translate into the intention or the reality of killing all and sundry.
Admittedly, none of these arguments remove our discomfort completely. We may also wonder, why the Amalekites deserved such severe punishment, since there were other nations who attacked Israel too. However, at this point we have no more information simply because Scripture is not interested in justifying God’s judgment to our satisfaction and because the focus is not on the fate of the Amalekites in their own right. Rather, this is the story of Saul and a reflection why he was in the end rejected. In this respect, the Amalekites are incidental to the events. This is an important point because we are sometimes tempted to pursue our own concerns in Scripture and concentrate on the blurry edges of the picture rather than on what is in the centre. It is not wrong to ask the questions that worry us, of course, but we need to resist the temptation to start speculating about issues that are out of focus. Like Job, who never got an answer to why he had to suffer, all we can do at the end is to submit to the God whom we know from the testimony of Scripture and our own experience as wise, as well as loving and just. Let us not forget that He is the God who is willing to show mercy even to those steeped in sheer cruelty if they repent (Jonah 3:1-10).
[1] This is illustrated in Abraham’s story when the Philistine king, Abimelech, takes Sarah into his harem because Abraham said that she was his sister (Gen 20:1-20). When God reveals this to the king, he is horrified and confronts the patriarch. Abraham explains that he lied because he thought there was no ‘fear of God’ in the place (Gen 20:11). Ironically, it is the pagan king, Abimelech, who acts with integrity (i.e. fears God) thus demonstrating that pagans could show ‘fear of God’.
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