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CHAPTER 9 : The War against Amalek - Saul's Disobedience, and its
Motives -Samuel commissioned to announce Saul's Rejection - Agag
Hewn in Pieces. (1 SAMUEL 14:47-52; 15)
THE successful war against the Philistines had secured Saul in possession of the
throne.^136 Henceforth his reign was marked by wars against the various enemies of
Israel, in all of which he proved victorious.^137
These expeditions are only indicated, not described, in the sacred text, as not
forming constituent elements in the history of the kingdom of God, however they
may have contributed to the prosperity of the Jewish state. The war against Amalek
alone is separately told (ch. 15), alike from its character and from its bearing on the
kingdom which God would establish in Israel. Along with these outward successes
the sacred text also indicates the seeming prosperity of Saul, as regarded his family-
life.^138 It almost appears as if it had been intended to place before us, side by side in
sharp contrast, these two facts: Saul's prosperity both at home and abroad, and his
sudden fall and rejection, to show forth that grand truth which all history is evolving:
Jehovah reigneth!
Israel's oldest and hereditary enemies were the Amalekites. Descended from Esau
(Genesis 36:12, 16; 1 Chronicles 1:36; comp. Josephus' Antiq. 2., 1, 2), they
occupied the territory to the south and south-west of Palestine. They had been the
first wantonly to attack Israel in the wilderness,^139 (Exodus 17:8, etc.), and "war
against Amalek from generation to generation," had been the Divine sentence upon
them.
Besides that first attack we know that they had combined with the Canaanites
(Numbers 14:43-45), the Moabites (Judges 3:22, 13), and the Midianites (Judges
7:12) against Israel. What other more direct warfare they may have carried on, is not
expressly mentioned in Scripture, because, as frequently observed, it is not a record
of the national history of Israel. But from 1 Samuel 15:33 we infer that, at the time
of which we write, they were not only in open hostility against Israel, but behaved
with extreme and wanton cruelty. Against this unrelenting hereditary foe of the
kingdom of God the ban had long been pronounced (Deuteronomy 25:17-19). The
time had now arrived for its execution, and Samuel summoned Saul in the most
solemn manner to this work. It was in itself a difficult expedition. To be carried out
in its full sweep as a "ban," it would, in Saul's then state of mind, have required
peculiar self-abnegation and devotion. Looking back upon it from another stage of
moral development and religious dispensation, and in circumstances so different that
such questions and duties can never arise,^140 and that they seem immeasurably far
(^)