“The prime minister referred again to Amalek in the letter sent on 3 November 2023 to Israeli soldiers and officers. The relevant biblical passage reads as follows: ‘Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses’.”
That’s from 1 Samuel 15.3, but you probably need to read the whole chapter to appreciate the full flavour of Netanyahu’s meaning.
Amalekites
Saul, king of the Israelites, didn’t carry out the complete destruction of the Amalekites as God commanded, at least not to a tee.
“And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. (15.8)
“But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them; but everything that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly.” (15.9)
No wonder God was upset. He told Saul to kill everything and everyone! So He sent Samuel to tell Saul that he had screwed up and was no longer fit to be king.
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Saul, who may be considered the more “liberal” and merciful wing of Israelite politics, said his people wanted him to keep the good stuff.
“But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in Gilgal.” (15.21)
But Samuel said the Lord much preferred complete obedience to sacrifice. Saul realised the error of his ways, but it was too late: “I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord, and thy words: because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice.” (15.24)
In contemporary politics, Saul messed up by following opinion polls, rather than the demand of the most literal and fundamentalist segment of the population. Netanyahu is no doubt taking that lesson to heart.
Samuel then made Saul take Agag to him. The defeated king said, “Surely the bitterness of death is past.” (15.32) But “Samuel hewed Agag to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal.” (15.33)
Now, a learned correspondent sent me another biblical reference from another learned correspondent of his, who commented that “the Bible may be accounted the favourite reading material of the majority of Mr Netanyahu’s cabinet”.
Midianites
This one is about the Midianites in chapter 31 of Numbers.
“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying[,] Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites …” (Numbers 31.1-2)
Moses then called in all the troops from all the Israelite tribes, who then slaughtered the Midianites, except the women and children. Angry that so many were spared, Moses cited the Lord’s command and warned of a plague on them for their “transgression”, then ordered the troops to kill everyone who was left, except the female virgins!
“Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
“But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.” (31.17-18)
I am beginning to wonder if there is not a biblical reason for the high casualties among women and children in Gaza.
When the Lord says total destruction, as the Old Testament teaches, He means TOTAL destruction.
Canaanites, and the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites
And finally, the Canaanites. Throughout his illustrious career, the late Palestinian-American literary critic Edward Said often referred to the Palestinians as the Canaanites.
In case you are not familiar with these ancient people and their land, it’s “the Promised Land” that the Lord offered as part of his covenant with Israel, so you can guess what happened to the Canaanites even without a knowledge of the Bible.
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As God said to Abraham, “I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession …” (Genesis 17.8) And again in Psalms 105: “Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance.”
The same promise from God would be repeated to Moses in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy; and to David in 1 Chronicles.
I love reading Genesis. God delivered the good news about the promised land in a single short verse before the bad; two verses down, he demanded that “every man child among you shall be circumcised” (17.10) and elaborated on the bodily procedure in the next four verses, with a special mention for Abraham.
Actually, the Land of Canaan, the land of “Milk and Honey” because of its fertile soil, was inhibited by six other nations besides the Canaanites, all of them – the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites – appeared to have been living in peace. (The Girgashites might have been originally invaders of Canaan but eventually settled down; the Hivites and Jebusites were probably Canaanites.)
“And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them.” (Deuteronomy 7.1-2 )
Experts believe their land ran westward from the Jordan River to the east of the Mediterranean Sea and therefore included parts of modern-day Israel, Lebanon and Syria.
That, by the way, is the real meaning of “From the river to the sea”, which many pro-Israeli commentators have insisted is an antisemitic slogan shouted by pro-Palestinian protesters worldwide expressing genocidal intent against Israel.
Where does all this biblical stuff lead? As the early generations of European-educated immigrants and intelligentsia with the social democratic commitments of the Israeli Labor Party have given way to the extremists, the far-right and the fundamentalists, the Zionist project has turned openly colonial and therefore biblical.
I have come to think that it’s impossible for outsiders to understand today the Israeli perspective on the Palestine conflict without a good knowledge of the Old Testament.
The Bible, I think, will help you understand far better than The New York Times.
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