Exodus 17:8-16 Exodus 17:8 16 Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. So Moses said to Joshua, Choose for us men, and go out and fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand. So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword. Then the LORD said to Moses, Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The LORD Is My Banner, saying, Because a hand [was] against the throne of the LORD, the LORD will have war with Amalek from generation to generation. Introduction/Review For their attack on the Israelites in the wilderness, the Amalekites have now been sentenced to eventual, ultimate annihilation. This will mean the killing of people, including women, and children, and infants, as well as livestock. (cf. 1 Sam. 15:1-3) This will mean the destruction of Amalek as a nation, as a people, and as a culture. The real question we have to ask here is this: Is there anything about this specific killing of Amalekite men, women, children, and infants that contradicts the holy character of God His infinite goodness, and wisdom, and justice? And as we saw last week, the answer is no there is no contradiction. Our human sensibilities (which are finite and also defective because of our sin) may still be offended, but there is nothing to keep us from wholly submitting by faith to the perfectly pure and holy character of God. We also saw last week that the first, and most important thing for us to understand is that this war against the Amalekites is Yahweh s war, and not ultimately the war of any man or nation. We saw that if this is true, then it changes everything. We start first of all with the sovereign rights of the Creator and Governor of the universe of the Potter over the clay. Second of all, we remember that the Bible teaches that all sinned in Adam even infants. If all have sinned in Adam, then even infants are subject to death (Rom. 5:12), and are by their very nature guilty children of wrath (Eph. 2:3). And so we come back again to this issue of the potter s right over the clay. God could have responded to the Amalekite attack by sending missionaries and prophets, like He sent Jonah to Nineveh. Instead, God placed the entire nation and culture of Amalek under the ban, devoting them to complete and total destruction. There is no mercy and grace here, but neither is there any injustice. To the contrary, here is the perfect justice of a holy God. We will have to always keep these things in our mind. So now the only question is: how do we know that this really was Yahweh s war, and not just human terrorism that uses God as a justification? Remember Moses on the hill with the staff of God in his hand? When the staff was raised, the Israelites prevailed, but when Moses grew 1
weary of holding it up, the Amalekites prevailed. The point was simple: Israel is the obvious underdog and cannot possibly win unless Yahweh fights with them and for them. God Himself was zealous for Israel and all the world to know that these wars were His, and not Israel s. But there s another reason that all who have faith can truly know that this war against the Amalekites is Yahweh s war. I. The ancestry of the Amalekites The Amalekites were descended from Esau, who was the twin brother of Jacob. The original Amalek was actually the grandson of Esau. (Gen. 36:12; 36:15-16). So the Israelites and the Amalekites are descended from two twin brothers, Jacob and Esau, the sons of Isaac, the son of Abraham. The Amalekites would certainly have been aware of their own history, going all the way back to Abraham, but that would also mean at least a basic awareness of the history of their cousins, the Israelites. It seems they would have at least remembered the basic covenant promises that God gave to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob the promise of numerous offspring (whom the Amalekites were now attacking) the promise of the land of Canaan (which did not include the territory of the Amalekites), and the promise of a blessing for all the peoples of the earth (which could have included the Amalekites). As one commentator says: If only they, like Abraham, would have believed. Instead they came and attacked Israel at Rephidim. (Kaiser) Regardless of what the Amalekites knew or remembered of their own history or the history of the Israelites, this at least reminds us of another very important piece of the puzzle. II. The high calling and destiny of the Israelites The Israelites are the people through whom God has purposed to bring His salvation blessings to all the peoples of the earth. When Jacob was fleeing from his brother, Esau, he saw a vision of a stairway reaching to heaven, with the angels of God ascending and descending on it: Genesis 28:13 14 And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. The nation of Israel was the vehicle that God would use to bring the Messiah, Jesus, into this world. The Apostle John describes it like this: Revelation 12:1 2, 5 And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne. The point here is not only that it was a Jewish woman named Mary who gave birth to Jesus, but that it was the whole history of Israel that was pregnant with the coming of the Messiah. The whole history of God s covenant relationship with Israel was a preparing of the way for the 2
Savior of the world who is Jesus. We could think of the nation of Israel as the cocoon inside of which God is preserving and nurturing all His promises of salvation and new life. III. What does it mean when the Amalekites attack the nation of Israel? And so when the Amalekites attack the Israelites when they lift up their hand against the throne of Yahweh they are attacking nothing less than God s sovereign purposes to bring the blessings of His salvation to all the earth in the person of Jesus Christ. It s in this same light that we also need to remember something else. IV. What about the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites? God never called Israel to any expansionistic, military conquering of the world. Quite to the contrary! Israel s military activities were actually to be limited to the comparatively small area between the Euphrates River in the north, the brook of Egypt in the south, the Mediterranean Sea in the west and the desert to the east (cf. the generalized borders/boundaries of the Promised Land ; Deut. 11:24; Josh. 1:4). When the Israelites went to battle with any city within this broader area that was nevertheless outside the specific boundaries of the land allotted to the twelve tribes (Josh. 13-19), they were always first of all to offer terms of peace (cf. Deut. 20:10-11; Moabites (Lot); Ammonites (Lot); Edomites (Esau); Arameans). 1 In fact, we specifically hear the Lord commanding the Israelites on their way to the conquest of the Promised Land: Deuteronomy 2:4 5, 8-9, 19 You are about to pass through the territory of your brothers, the people of Esau, who live in Seir; and they will be afraid of you. So be very careful. Do not contend with them, for I will not give you any of their land, no, not so much as for the sole of the foot to tread on So we went on, away from our brothers, the people of Esau, who live in Seir And we turned and went in the direction of the wilderness of Moab. And the LORD said to me, Do not harass Moab or contend with them in battle, for I will not give you any of their land for a possession And when you approach the territory of the people of Ammon, do not harass them or contend with them, for I will not give you any of the land of the people of Ammon as a possession. Remember, these were nations immediately bordering the nation of Israel, and yet God barred Israel from ever taking possession of their land. So what about the nations within the actual territory that God gave to Israel as an inheritance? With the single, lone exception of the Amalekites, it was these nations, and these nations only that were to be devoted entirely to destruction men, women, children, and infants. 1 Deuteronomy 20:10 11 When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. We have to read the reference to forced labor in light of all the other laws governing Israel s treatment of slaves precisely because Israel itself knew what it was to be enslaved to a cruel master (cf. Deut. 5:12-14). In other words, serving the Israelites should always have been a far better prospect than the serving of any other nation. In fact, this could even be an opportunity for many Gentiles to see firsthand the goodness, and majesty, and glory of the God of Israel. (cf. Josh. 9:22-27) 3
Deuteronomy 20:15 17 (cf. Deut. 2:26-34; 3:1-6) In the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded. So why is this? What is the meaning of this? We have to remember in the first place that God has already been very patient and long-suffering with the peoples living in this land. Four hundred and fifty years earlier, God had spoken to Abraham about his distant descendants: Genesis 15:16 And they shall come back here [to the land of Canaan after their slavery in Egypt] in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. So on the one hand, we have here the righteous judgment of God on a people and a culture whose wickedness and depravity had reached its fullest extent. In other words, the Amorites were fully ripe for God s judgement. And yet there s also another side to this picture. Why did God choose this specific land where these specific people lived to be an inheritance for the nation of Israel? We see one of the reasons in Ezekiel chapter five: Ezekiel 5:5 Thus says the Lord GOD: This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the center of the nations, with countries all around her. In Ezekiel 38 God describes His people as dwelling at the center of the earth. (Ezek. 38:11-12) The land of Canaan is really a land bridge situated between the Mediterranean Sea and the desert and so a strategic route connecting the north and the south. Important international trade routes ran through the land of Canaan. Throughout history, the land of Canaan has sat in the midst of empires both to the north and to the south, and so it s also been the sight of many conflicts and battles between the north and south. So why did God set His people in the center of the nations, with countries all around them? It was so that the light of His own glorious, holy, saving presence might be visible in all the earth not through an empire-building military, but rather through the light that was to stream forth from Jerusalem and the temple. Right after saying that He had set His people in the center of the nations, God went on to warn His now rebellious people: Ezekiel 5:8 Behold, I, even I, am against you. And I will execute judgments in your midst in the sight of the nations. So we see from a negative perspective that the point was always that all God s dealings with His people should be in the sight of the nations, so that they, too, might ultimately come to know the blessings of God s salvation. After all, this was an essential part of God s promises to Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob. The Psalms are full of this kind of desire and longing, and so are the prophets. We might especially think of the Queen of Sheba, and her pilgrimage to the land of Canaan in the days of Solomon. (1 Kings 10:1-13) The prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the temple sums up so much of the heartbeat of the Old Testament: 4
1 Kings 8:41 43 Likewise, when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a far country for your name s sake (for they shall hear of your great name and your mighty hand, and of your outstretched arm), when he comes and prays toward this house, hear in heaven your dwelling place and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to you, in order that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and that they may know that this house that I have built is called by your name. It's interesting that after Israel s long rebellion against God, God not only judged them by sending them into exile, but He also used this dispersion of His people in the exile to bring the message of the one true God to the surrounding nations. And so this explains why when Paul went out on his evangelistic journeys, wherever he went he found not only Jews, but also Godfearing Gentiles who were ready and waiting to hear the message of the Messiah come from Israel. Why did God choose the land of Canaan as an inheritance for His people? One of the most important reasons was because of God s redeeming plan for all the surrounding nations it was because of God s purpose to bring the blessings of His salvation to all the peoples of the earth. And so even in God s righteous command to save alive nothing that breathes in the land of Canaan there was a redemptive purpose. In Deuteronomy 20 Moses says that one reason for the total destruction of the Canaanite nations was so that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the LORD your God. (Deut. 20:18) We might not like to think that this requires the killing of infants and children, and yet even the infants and children were a part of these depraved and wicked cultures. And so by the killing of everything that breathed God was taking measures to preserve His own people in holiness. God was purposing to create a place on earth where true righteousness could thrive. And, of course, the point of Israel s purity and holiness wasn t just for their own sake, but also for the sake of the surrounding nations, so that the light of God s salvation could shine forth from Jerusalem into all the world. We ve all heard of Mesopotamia referred to as the cradle of civilization. The just and righteous annihilation of the Canaanites (which will always be offensive to our human sensibilities) was intended to create a place that would be, in actual reality, the cradle of redemption. V. How does the annihilation of the inhabitants of Canaan help us to understand God s war on the Amalekites? When we understand all these things, we can see in an even better light what God is doing in Exodus 17. What we have here is not a mean, spiteful, bloodthirsty God. Not at all! (Though His decrees may still offend our human sensibilities) Apart from the inhabitants of the land of Canaan (and Gilead), the Amalekites are the only people that God commands His people to devote to total destruction. And why is this? Because when they lift up their hand against the throne of Yahweh, they were attacking nothing less than God s sovereign purposes to bring the blessings of His salvation to all the earth in the person of Jesus Christ. All the rest of the wars of Israel, and in fact all the rest of the Bible, has to be understood in this light, or it cannot be understood at all. And so those who see in the Old Testament a God of wrath, and in the New Testament a God of love simply do not understand the Bible at all. Even the wrath of God against the Amalekites is ultimately in the service of His redeeming love. 5
VI. The triumph of God s word and redemptive plan in the final destruction of the Amalekites. So what did happen with the Amalekites? Last week, we saw that about a year from now, the Amalekites will defeat the Israelites when they attempt the conquest of Canaan without the Lord s presence with them. Three hundred years from now, God will use Gideon and a small band of 300 men to defeat the invading Midianite and Amalekite armies. One hundred years after Gideon, the prophet Samuel will say to Saul, the first king of Israel: 1 Samuel 15:1 3 Thus says the LORD of hosts, I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. Well, Saul did defeat the Amalekites 1 Samuel 15:7 9 But Saul and the people spared Agag [the king] and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them. 1 Samuel 15:17, 19 Samuel said [to Saul] Why did you not obey the voice of the LORD? Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the LORD? It wasn t that many years later when the Amalekites carried off all the wives and children of David (the future king of Israel) and his men while they were off at war and burned their city (Ziklag) with fire. (1 Sam. 30:1-2) After seeking the Lord s will (1 Sam. 30:7-8), David pursued the Amalekites: 1 Samuel 30:17 18 And David struck them down from twilight until the evening of the next day, and not a man of them escaped, except four hundred young men, who mounted camels and fled. About three hundred years after David, in the days of King Hezekiah, we hear of five hundred men from the tribe of Simeon who went to Mount Seir and defeated the remnant of the Amalekites who had escaped the wars of Saul and David (1 Chron. 4:41-43; cf. 2 Sam. 8:11-12). And then, finally, we come to the events of the book of Esther, almost 1000 years after the Amalekite attack in Exodus and a little over 500 years after King Saul s disobedience when he took the forbidden plunder. By the time of Esther, it seems that the Amalekites no longer existed as a people or culture. But there were still Amalekites left, and it seems that at least one Amalekite had risen to a position of great power in the Persian empire. We read early on in Esther: Esther 2:5 Now there was a Jew in Susa the citadel whose name was Mordecai, the son of Jair, son of Shimei, son of Kish, a Benjaminite. 6
Right away, we re meant to think of Saul, who was also a Benjaminite and also the son of a man named Kish. (1 Sam. 9:1-2) We might also think of another man from the house of Saul whose name was Shimei. (2 Sam. 16:5) So Mordecai is a Benjaminite, almost certainly from the family of Saul, living now as an official of some importance in the capital of the Persian empire. But higher up, and far more powerful than Mordecai, was a man named Haman. Esther 3:1 6 After these things King Ahasuerus promoted Haman the Agagite 2 and advanced him and set his throne above all the officials who were with him. And all the king s servants who were at the king s gate bowed down and paid homage to Haman But Mordecai did not bow down or pay homage And when Haman saw that Mordecai did not bow down or pay homage to him, Haman was filled with fury. But he disdained to lay hands on Mordecai alone. So, as they had made known to him the people of Mordecai, Haman sought to destroy all the Jews, the people of Mordecai, throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus. And so the author of Esther goes on to tell the story of how Haman paid off the king for permission to send these letters: Esther 3:13 Letters were sent by couriers to all the king s provinces with instruction to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children, in one day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month and to plunder their goods. Here, for the last time, we have an Amalekite lifting up his hand against the throne of Yahweh. Here, for the last time, we have an Amalekite scheming the destruction of God s sovereign purposes to bring the blessings of His salvation to all the earth in the person of Jesus Christ. Well, if you don t know how God brought the wicked plans of Haman back on his own head, you just need to read the book of Esther! But for right now, this should be enough to help us understand what Mordecai says to Esther, his cousin, in chapter four: Esther 4:13 14 Do not think to yourself that in the king s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this? And then, in chapter six, from a far more unlikely place: Esther 6:13 Then [Haman s] wise men and his wife Zeresh said to him, If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of the Jewish people, you will not overcome him but will surely fall before him. And so, in the end, it was Esther and Mordecai who received permission from the king to send out these letters: 2 Haman is very carefully and consistently referred to in Esther as Haman the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews. (Esther 3:10-11; 8:3-5; 9:6-10, 24) Mordecai, on the other hand, is consistently referred to as Mordecai the Jew. (Esther 5:12 13; 6:10; 8:7; 9:29, 31; 10:3) 7
Esther 8:10 11 Then he sent the letters by mounted couriers saying that the king allowed the Jews who were in every city to gather and defend their lives, to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate any armed force of any people or province that might attack them, children and women included, and to plunder their goods. And so they did only three times it s carefully pointed out that contrary to Saul 500 years earlier, they laid no hands on the plunder. (Esther 9:6-10, 15-16) Conclusion The story of the Amalekites is a warning of the ultimate fate that awaits all who would plot and scheme against God s redeeming purposes. Why is it the Amalekites who become the warning? Because the Amalekites not only attacked Israel, but they have the infamous distinction of being the first ever to do so. In the book of Numbers, when Balak, king of Moab, calls Balaam to curse Israel for him, we read things like this instead: Numbers 24:20 (cf. Zech. 2:8) Then [Balaam] looked on Amalek and took up his discourse and said, Amalek was the first among the nations, but its end is utter destruction. What we learn from God s unceasing war on the Amalekites is that our God will not tolerate any attack on His sovereignty, especially as that sovereignty is displayed in His redeeming plans for all the earth. So now we can read again Exodus 17:14-16: Then the LORD said to Moses, Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The LORD Is My Banner, saying, Because a hand was against the throne of the LORD, the LORD will have war with Amalek from generation to generation. Brothers and sisters, let this be an anchor and a rock of encouragement to us as we live in these uncertain days. And let this also be an anchor and a rock of encouragement to us as we seek to be a part of extending God s salvation blessings to more, and more, and more people in our own community and around the world. In the end, every obstacle to the triumph of God s salvation will be completely destroyed, and all the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. (Hab. 2:14; cf. Isa. 11:9) Listen to the words of the coming Messiah through the prophet Isaiah: Isaiah 49:5 7 And now the LORD says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him; and that Israel might be gathered to him : It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. Thus says the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation, the servant of rulers: Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves; because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you. We ve seen, now, three reasons that we can know the annihilation of the Amalekites was truly and ultimately Yahweh s war. First, in this annihilation of the Amalekites there is nothing at all 8
inconsistent with the infinite goodness, and wisdom, and justice of God. Second, from its beginning in Exodus to its end in Esther the success of this war against the Amalekites would have been completely impossible unless Yahweh was fighting with and for His people. And the third reason is that the annihilation of the Amalekites is truly an expression of God s sovereign purposes to bring the blessings of His salvation to all the earth in the person of Jesus Christ. Remember: These reasons will only be convincing to those who already have faith. In the end, reason cannot be the ground of our faith, rather faith must always be the foundation for all of our reasoning. And yet(!) that s not to say that these reasons are not perfectly logical, and consistent, and rational and even wholly irrefutable. Once we have seen the beauty and tasted the sweetness of God s salvation we will always find ourselves wholly convinced by the irrefutable reason and evidence of Scripture. In fact, for us who believe, we can and should be always learning to more and more see the perfect goodness of all God s ways including His decree of the total destruction and annihilation of the Amalekites. 9