Go, now, attack Amalek, and put under the ban everything he has.
Do not spare him; kill men and women, children and infants, oxen and sheep,
camels and donkeys.
1 Samuel 15:3
What are we to make of this? Samuel has conveyed a message of the Lord to
Saul: place Amalek (the people) under the ban, which amounts
to total annihilation. Amalek has been a mortal enemy of Israel from the time of
the Exodus, and God has sworn to deal with them once and for all.
Saul’s failure to complete this task - saving the best of the spoils in order
that they may be offered as sacrifice to God - removes him from God’s favor,
ultimately setting the stage for the anointing of David as king. This verse came
up in a recent adult study class in church, and we’ve been reading and studying
it since. This post is meant to summarize my readings and help put my
thoughts into some semblance of order.
The USCCB’s online bible has this footnote for ban which reads:
…this terminology mandates that all traces of the Amalekites (people, cities,
animals, etc.) be exterminated. No plunder could be seized for personal use. In
the light of Dt 20:16–18, this injunction would eliminate any tendency toward
syncretism. The focus of this chapter is that Saul fails to execute this
order.
The Catholic Study Bible notes:
The interpretation of God’s will here attributed to Samuel is in keeping with
the abhorrent practices of blood revenge prevalent among pastoral seminomadic
people such as the Hebrews had recently been. The slaughter of the innocent
has never been in conformity with the will of God.
Compare with the Flood, or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. In those
cases, though, the effects are through the direct action of God Himself. In this
case, it’s people taking up the sword. We’re horrified and rightfully so.
I want to approach this text with a couple of things in mind. First, I desire
for my reading to be consonant with the Catholic approach to the scriptures.
Secondly, the difficulty of this verse presents a stumbling block for many,
and it’s important to be able to give an answer of some kind that meets the
person where they are while maintaining fidelity to the text. That is, without
whitewashing or hand-waving.
I have done a good bit of research on Amalek, Saul, this ban, and the challenges
associated with it from a variety of sources: Catholic, Protestant and Jewish. The
study, I think, has been fruitful and moved me to dig even deeper into the Old
Testament.
First, is it even historically accurate? The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies
alleges that wholesale exterminations as described in ancient texts probably
never happened quite as described.
The genocidal campaigns claimed for the early Israelites, however, were largely
fictional: the intrinsic improbability and internal inconsistencies of the account
in Joshua and its incompatibility with the stories of Judges leave little doubt
about this. Much of the biblical ideology of the ban was fact formulated later,
in the seventh century BC, yet it was neither unique nor entirely a later literary
invention.
And to be sure, the Amalekites pop up again
several times in the OT. 1 and 2 Samuel were
likely written between the 6th and 5th centuries BC. David was born around 1000 BC,
so at a minimum we’re looking at a few centuries between the events described
and the final versions of the text. Even if portions of 1 Samuel were written by
Samuel, the New Jerome Biblical Commentary suggests evidence of heavy
redaction after the fact. On the other hand, maybe it happened exactly
as described. There’s no real reason to take the text at anything other than face
value, except that it feels shockingly horrible. Moreover, we can’t
even impute the failure of Saul to tenderheartedness or moral objection - later in
1 Samuel 22 we read that he had an entire city of priests killed for assisting
David - “men, women, children, infants, and oxen, donkeys and sheep.” (1 Sam 22:11-19)
Questioning the absolute veracity of these accounts may seem to open the door to
questioning the authority of anything else in the OT, but I’m not sure that
necessarily follows. Dei Verbum is clear (emphasis mine):
…attention should be given, among other things, to “literary forms.” For
truth is set forth and expressed differently in texts which are variously historical,
prophetic, poetic, or of other forms of discourse. The interpreter must investigate
what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in
particular circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance
with the situation of his own time and culture. For the correct understanding
of what the sacred author wanted to assert, due attention must be paid to the
customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and narrating which
prevailed at the time of the sacred writer, and to the patterns men normally
employed at that period in their everyday dealings with one another. But,
since Holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the sacred spirit in which
it was written, no less serious attention must be given to the content and unity
of the whole of Scripture if the meaning of the sacred texts is to be correctly
worked out.
So maybe it’s not history as we understand history today: a careful
presentation of facts designed to convey, as accurately as possible, the events
described. It doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable to me that a set of stories
about how a people came to be would be subject to a bit of dramatic
embellishment over time, particularly in the context of David’s ascendancy to
the throne. I hasten to add at this point that this is most certainly not the
position I have found in the rabbinic commentaries I’ve looked at. Amalek
represented nothing less than the complete annihilation of the people of Israel,
stretching all the way back to the Exodus and threads of which continue into the
modern age. At least one of the commandments given to Jews regarding
Amalek is observed in the festival of Purim, remembering “what Amalek did to the
Israelites.”
Even so, this text seems to have occasioned a fair amount of discussion, much of it
devolving to the source of morality - in the act itself, or in the command?
Avi Sagi writes:
The question of whether moral obligations can be see as contingent on God’s
command is an ancient one. Philosophical tradition tends to credit Plato, in the
Eurthyphro with it’s first formulation. Current philosophical discourse
usually presents the question in terms of the following dilemma: Is an act right
(or wrong) because God commands it (or forbids it), or does God command (or
forbid) an act because it is right (or wrong)? According to the first option -
that an act is right or wrong because God commands or forbids it - moral
obligations have no independent status and are conditioned by a divine command,
which determines the moral value of an act. This approach, which in modern
philosophy is referred to as “divine command morality,” is deeply rooted in
Christian tradition and in contemporary philosophical thought. According to the
second option - that God commands or forbids an act because it is right or wrong -
God’s command does not determine the moral value of an act. Rather, God
commands or forbids certain acts because of their intrinsic positive or negative value.
Later, in a summary of three major schools of thought opposite the position of strict realism:
The realistic approach suggests that the punishment was justified in light of
Amalek’s wickedness. The various trends grouped under the rubric of the
symbolic approach endorse a different view. The metaphysical trend intensifies
the Amalekite evil and transforms it into the demonic foundation of existence.
The conceptual trend expands the concrete dimensions of the story and turns it
into a contest between ideas, whereas the psychological trend sees the story as
a symbol of the existential human drama, a struggle against the evil inside us.
All these trends agree on a characterization of Amalek as identical with evil
and thus justify total war against it.
However, Maimonides found an interesting synthesis:
…Maimonides relied on two assumptions. First, that Amalek was punished because
of a real event that took place in the past, and that this punishment was not
meant as revenge; rather, its purpose was to prevent the occurrence of similar
acts in the future. Second, he assumed that the Torah the biblical text as well
as the rabbinic literature which refers to it make up a coherent legal system.
If the Torah contains a general guideline forbidding the punishment of children
for the sins of their fathers, then this instruction must also apply to
Amalek. Resting on these two assumptions, Bornstein concluded that if the
Amalekites no longer behaved like Amalekites, and, moreover, clearly expressed
this through their readiness to adopt the basic norms of the seven Noachic
commandments, as well as to pay tribute and enter into servitude, it would be
wrong to kill them.
Finally:
The first premise of the moral trend is that the text must be interpreted
coherently; neither the exegete nor the halakhist look at the text as an
isolated unit, divorced from the broader context of the Torah and the rabbinic
tradition. Moreover, if the basic assumption is that the Torah conveys the word
of a good God, then a moral reading of the canonical text is not only a
theoretical option but a religious obligation.
The moral approach is preferred by its supporters on the grounds that a
literal reading may at times cast doubts on the notion that God is a good
God. Advocates of the literal trend take issue precisely with this point.
Although they accept that the text is usually read within a broader context,
they do not believe that this context including an assumption of God’s goodness
can be used to change the text’s clear meaning. The context might be useful in
instances of textual ambiguity, they argue, but the punishment of Amalek is an
explicit command and, therefore, we must assume that it is also morally correct.
As Christians, we read the OT with the knowledge of the
Incarnate Christ and everything that happens with and through His passion, cross
and resurrection. These graces come from the Holy Spirit, and would not have been
available (or even comprehensible) to a reader contemporary with Saul.
It’s impossible to separate the OT from the NT, as they
effectively form one single history of our salvation. We read the OT for the
story of the covenants that we might understand more deeply their fulfillment in
Christ. Neither can stand alone.
The Catechism (emphases mine):
107 The inspired books teach the truth. “Since therefore all that the inspired
authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy
Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and
without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished
to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures.”
[…]
109 In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret
Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors
truly wanted to affirm, and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words.
110 In order to discover the sacred authors' intention, the reader must take
into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in
use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current.
“For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the
various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in
other forms of literary expression."
111 But since Sacred Scripture is inspired, there is another and no less
important principle of correct interpretation, without which Scripture would
remain a dead letter. “Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the
light of the same Spirit by whom it was written."
[…]
115 According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of
Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the
allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four
senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the
Church.
Approaching scripture through the four senses, I come up with the following
takeaways, starting with the position that this story is told, for our benefit and in this way for a
particular reason, and probably not for the same reason that the writer intended for
the original audience 1,500 years ago.
Literal: an order was given which flies in the face of everything we hold as
Christians, but are we carrying modern sensibilities to a Bronze age semi-nomadic
people? Certainly this seems to directly contradict the commandments against
killing. Why was Amalek singled out for such a thing, whether it happened as
described or not? If this was an error of interpretation on the part of Samuel,
how was there no correction issued at some point? Or does the order - however
it was carried out - simply play a part in the larger story of Saul vis-à-vis
David? Certainly Amalek reappears later on in Scripture (1 Chron 18:11). In context, 1 and 2 Samuel tell the story of 2 kinds of king, a prophet, and God’s plan for his chosen people.
Allegorical: The struggle against evil in the world is very real. God intends to
carry the people of the promise safely onward through history in order to form
and prepare the nation from which the Savior will come in the fullness of time.
Stephen Clark writes in The Old Testament in the Light of the New:
…The command to destroy the Amalekites is a special case in
the history of the Israelite monarchy and has occasioned much discussion…the
incident is probably a matter of spiritual warfare, warfare with Satanic forces,
not just human warfare that we have considered in discussing the challenge of the
Canaanites in the land. The Amalekites were a people who tried to destroy God’s
people while they were being redeemed by God and were being provided for by him
in the wilderness. (Ex 17:8-16; Deut 25:17-19). Their attack was therefore more
directly on God himself than most later attacks and was perhaps the paradigm example
of other nations attacking God by attacking his people….
The Amalekites could be considered typological of those who seek to wipe out
God’s people and God’s rule in the world, and God’s response was typological of
his commitment to destroy the kingdom of Satan. God’s command for how to deal
with the matter was likely in many respects beyond the comprehension of his
servants, but therefore all the more needed to be strictly obeyed.
Moral: “for our instruction” (Rom 15:4), Saul was
not a man after God’s own heart. He lacked the inward disposition toward God’s will and
instead substituted his own, preferring the externals of sacrifice, and probably insincerely
at that. The lesson here for us is clear.
Anagogical: we are destined to be people after His heart, if only we turn from
our idols here on earth. Our sin must also be completely put to death, in all of
its shapes and forms. We will not be able to do it, not alone anyway.
Final thoughts I believe consonant with a Catholic understanding:
Whether this happened as described, as history, we cannot know precisely. These
texts were completed at some remove from actual events. Nevertheless, the story
is here, in scripture, “for our instruction.” What is this instruction? It
certainly has nothing to do with genocide, or arbitrary killing - look at the
totality of scripture, and especially the fulfillment of the Law in the person
of Christ. Nothing could be further from any rational reading of the scriptures or
sacred tradition.
What is God saying to us, today, through this text, even as we are
conscious of the vast distance in time and space between the author and listener?
What was God asking of Saul? Obedience. Was he? Clearly not. Compare with
Abraham, who obeyed and whose hand was stayed by the Lord. Who is to know what
would have happened had Saul obeyed as instructed.
First, Amalek represents a type of sin and evil; we too must be ready to annihilate
sin completely (though, like Saul, we will not be successful). Unlike Saul, we
should strive properly order our disposition towards God’s will, even - and especially -
when we don’t understand.
Second, these sayings are hard, and it is right that we struggle with them. Jews have
likewise struggled with them for a long, long time. As Catholics we
must take a multi-layered approach to scripture. This is borne out in the CCC, Dei Verbum,
and in the Magisterium of Holy Church.
Third, we must acknowledge that some (all?) of this understanding comes as part of
the gift and graces of faith, and that hard sayings are stumbling blocks.
Finally, without deep study, we will not be “prepared to give a reason” (1 Pt 3:15)
We must continually read scripture in its totality, not in bits and pieces, isolated
from context. We must also be sure that we are in harmony with the teachings of the Church,
though which God continues to sanctify the world and save souls.
Sources:
- 1 Samuel 15:3, USCCB
- Dei Verbum
- Catechism of the Catholic Church
- Saul and the Amalekite Genocide, Pastor Steve McAlpine
- Did God Command Genocide?, Msgr. Charles Pope
- Hard Sayings of the Old Testament, Jimmy Akin
- EWTN Forum: Saul and Amalekites, Fr. John Echert
- Who Was Amalek and the Amalekites, Boruch Altein
- Does Torah Promote Genocide?, Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
- Torah and Genocide FAQ, Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
- Ancient Jewish History: The Amalekites , Jewish Virtual Library
- The Catholic Study Bible
- The Old Testament in the Light of the New, Stephen B. Clark
- Reading the Old Testament, Lawrence Boadt, C.S.P.
- The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. Raymond Brown, S.J.
- The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, ed. Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses
- Sagi, Avi. “The Punishment of Amalek in Jewish Tradition: Coping with the Moral Problem.” The Harvard Theological Review, vol. 87, no. 3, 1994, pp. 323–346., www.jstor.org/stable/1509808.
,_oil_on_canvas,_204.5_x_188.3_cm,_Philadelphia_Museum_of_Art.jpg){kind=link}