What can we learn from the original October 7?
Sources:
II Samuel 1:2 “It was on the third day, and here a man came from the camp of Saul and his clothing was torn and earth was on his head; and when he came before David, he fell to the ground and bowed”
II Samuel 1:8 “And he said to me: who are you? and I said to him: I am an Amalekite”
II Samuel 1:13 “And David said to the youth who had told him: Where are you from? and he said: I am the son of an Amalekite stranger”
I Samuel 30:1 “And it came to pass, when David and his men were come to Ziklag on the third day, that the Amalekites had made a raid upon the South, and upon Ziklag, and had smitten Ziklag, and burned it with fire”
I Samuel 30:3 “And when David and his men came to the city, behold, it was burned with fire; and their wives, and their sons, and their daughters, were taken captive”
It sits a few kilometers outside of the Gaza Strip and I’m certain all the residents of this village would never have forgotten anything about what occurred - if there was anyone left to ask. Before the events, it was a regular village, and its residents had turned the pages of their calendar to another regular day, not knowing that this day would be ever so different. No one saw what was coming. It’s true the enemy was always near and their desire to kill, rape and maim hadn’t abated - and everyone in the village knew it. Yet, life has its own interests and responsibilities, and while taking care of them, the villagers weren’t as alert as they probably should have been. Their guard was down and the watchful enemy timed everything perfectly. They descended on the village rapidly and seized many hostages. No one who could have helped was within earshot of the screams of the women and children, who were taken by force into a captivity worse than a nightmare. When the enemy left with their forcefully subdued hostages, nothing was left standing of this village in the Negev desert. It was burnt to the ground.
Did this happen on October 7? Perhaps it did. We will never know. If you are thinking that this story occurred in 2023, you are wrong by about 3,000 years, for this tale is recorded as having occurred around the year 1000 BCE. If you think these events sound frighteningly familiar, then consider who the actors in this event were - Israel and Amalek.
Most readers of the Bible are likely knowledgeable about a small nation that occupied the southern area of Biblical Israel in the Negev Desert (Numbers 13:29), called Amalek. This Bedouin tribe was considered the apotheosis of evil, a ragtag band of nomads who didn’t possess a defined territory, had no identifiable city where they could be found, and certainly never formed an army with which they fought their neighbors and enemies.
Amalek was different.
While their name appears about 50 times in the Bible, (this is a lot; to give perspective Elijah is mentioned 71 times, Noah 46 times and Miriam 15 times) at the beginning, there is an association with Esau (Genesis 36:12), making this nation cousins with Israel. But before you think that the newly liberated nation of former Egyptian slaves are on their way to barbecue with their cousins whom they haven’t seen in ages, Amalek attacks, surprising the Israelites in Refidim, almost as soon as the Exodus had begun. The reason for their aggression is unknown. The majority of historians and archaeologists believe Refidim to be in the southern portion of the Sinai Peninsula, 100 miles south of Eilat, which is the southern tip of the Negev Desert, and nearly 200 miles from Beer Sheba, in the northern part of the Negev. The text (Exodus 17:8) says, “Amalek came” implying that the Israelites weren’t trespassing on their ancestral lands, but they came out of their way to initiate a war. It seems they traveled a long way for many days for the purpose of killing the Israelites. This isn’t the only example of conflict between the Israelites and Amalekites. After they are defeated in this battle at Refidim (Exodus 17:13), Amalek returns with Canaanite reinforcements and routes the Israelites (Numbers 14:45). Not only the Biblical commentators demonize the Amalekites, God commands Moses to wipe out all traces of this people (Exodus 17:14).
It is true that there is a textual association with Haman that leads many to conclude he was of Amalekite descent (Book of Esther 3:1). His father Hamdata is called an Agagite, which was also the name of Amalekite king Agag (I Samuel 15:8). It is easy to see why Haman the anti-Semite and potential genocidist of the Jewish people is easily considered a potential Amalekite, even if the actual link between him and a king who lived in a different part of the world many generations earlier is not strong. Thus, let us remove Haman from the list of Amalekites for this discussion, since his link to Amalek is not clear and more Midrashic.
There is one - and only one - Amalekite mentioned in the Bible, whom the text tells us about as a person. His name is not given, but he has a most interesting interaction with King David. Let’s look at what happened.
King David was residing amongst the Philistines when King Saul was trying to kill him. A local king named Achish granted David and his men a town called Ziklag that was a border town between Philistia and Israel, about halfway between Gaza City and Beer Sheba (there are different theories, some put it a little northwest of Beer Sheba). David was called on by Achish to prove himself in war, a tough mission for him and his men since the war was against Saul. David went along for the ride, but at the last moment, the other Philistine kings appealed to Achish to send David and his men home since they didn’t trust what he would do when the battle began. David returned home to find his town, Ziklag, had been burnt to the ground in his absence by Amalekites and all the people who remained there, likely only elders, women and children, were taken hostage. David immediately pursued the marauders and won back the hostages in a surprise attack that left no on alive on the Amalek side.
Two days later, a man arrives in Ziklag with news for David. His clothes are rent and his head is covered with ashes, signs of mourning. He prostrates himself before David, as one would do for a king, and informs him that Saul and Jonathan are dead, defeated in battle.
When David asks how he knew about this, the man (also called a youth in the text) says that he came upon King Saul, who had already impaled himself on his own spear on Mount Gilboa, but Saul was still alive, in agony, and begged the man to kill him, which he did, adding in that “I was sure he could not live after he had fallen” (II Samuel 1:10).
David asked the man to identify himself and he said, “I am an Amalekite” (II Samuel 1:8). He then explains that he removed Saul’s crown and bracelet and brought them to David.
A few hours pass with David and his men mourning Saul before David asks the “youth” one more question: “From where are you?” An interesting answer to a question not asked ensues: “I am the son of an Amalekite ger.”
David becomes angry at the actions of the man, reprimands him harshly for killing “the anointed of God,” pronounces a judgment against him, which is the death penalty, and has him killed.
This is the first, and last, speaking part for an Amalekite in the Bible.
If I were writing this saga, I would have penned a different account. Being that the man is an Amalekite, I would have made him an evil character, eager to kill Saul in order to steal his valuable crown and bracelet in order to sell them on eBay for a large sum of money, and then apprehended by David on his way to deliver them to the buyer in nearby Philistia. When David learns of his origin, he draws his sword and immediately kills him, fulfilling the Biblical command to kill all Amalekites. Readers would have been satisfied to know that David fulfilled this Biblical command against an evil enemy. But our story doesn’t resemble my version at all.
When we look at this youth, despite his death sentence, which we will discuss, a different character emerges. This man only kills the King of Israel because Saul is in agony and has no chance to recover. He’s dying, but slowly. He’s in pain. This is an act of compassion and from his overt signs of mourning, he didn’t take any joy in killing this Israelite king, even if the Bible tells us he should have been his mortal enemy.
If we look deeper into the text, we might ask what this man was doing on Mount Gilboa at this time. He clearly wasn’t on his way home from the Supersol supermarket with sacks of groceries and bottles of Golan wine. We might expect this man to have been fighting his archenemies, the Israelites, on the Philistine side. But were that the case, he would have slaughtered Saul and taken great delight in doing so. Why was he there? If someone is in the middle of a battlefield, it seems likely they were involved in the fight and if he wasn’t out to kill Saul, then that means he was fighting on the side of the Israelites. Can such a thing be? Could an Amalekite fight alongside Israelites when Israelites are commanded to kill all people from this nation? Yet, there is no other explanation for why he is there. Unlike the other Israelite soldiers, who have either been killed or fled, he’s still with the king. There’s one other hint in the text, that he calls himself the son of an Amalekite stranger, or ger, which probably means his father adopted the Israelite God as his own. This is something unexpected and incredible, although it doesn’t answer why he doesn’t simply call himself an Israelite at this point.
Let’s review: We have an Amalekite fighting the Philistines with King Saul, who witnesses the king in agony, his chest pierced by his own sword, being begged to finish the king off, which he does with reluctance. He then mourns Saul, yet, somehow, he knows to take the crown to David in a remote Philistine area, though unbeknownst to him, it’s near where David has just slaughtered many Amalekites. It’s an incredible story!
This youth, or man, is compassionate towards poor King Saul, and very loyal. He is fighting for Israel and one of the only people either not to flee or have been killed in the massacre perpetrated by the Philistine army.
A few questions still linger: Why did this man self-identify as an Amalekite, twice no less? Should he have known better? This nameless youth/man shows an immense amount of loyalty to Saul, and then does the exact same thing to David, bringing him the crown and bowing down before him. Can we conclude that this lone Amalekite with a speaking part in the Bible was an adherent of the kings of Israel, or perhaps even more than that, he was a follower of the God of Israel?
One more question to ponder is something the youth would not have known. Did David just finish wiping out this man’s cousins and grandparents? It seems likely he was on this journey specifically to tell David about what happened to Saul because, despite his mourning, it seems he was ready to support David and even follow him. But it could also be he was on his way home to see his family. (One could imagine had he made it to his people’s supposed campsite and found them all dead, he likely would not have been a supporter of David any longer.) When you consider what happened to him next, David ordering the death penalty for his transgression of killing a king, it seems a hasty and inappropriate decision.
Maybe saying he adopted the Israelite God is going too far, (although still something to consider), but it seems certain he was fighting alongside the Israelites. Being that he is self-identifying as an Amalekite, we have to assume that’s what he was, even if his use of the term “ger” might lead one to conclude he’s an Israelite now. If we take him 100% at face value, it could be his father accepted the God of Israel but he didn’t. He was raised in that kind of household, therefore his allegiance was to the Israelites and their king, whom he served as a soldier. He should have considered the repercussions of being perceived as an Amalekite before a posse of nationalists, such as David and his men. Had he done so, would his fate have changed? It’s hard to be certain, but his sentence probably would have been the same. When David saw things his way, there was no other way. Even the shock of seeing an Amalekite covered in ashes of mourning, bringing him the royal crown didn’t rock David’s boat.
What of this transgression of killing a king that David is so adamant about? We know little about it, but it seems to be a well-known regional law. Saul lost his kingdom over it, letting the Amalekite king Agag stay alive (I Samuel 15:8), observing this well-known tradition despite Samuel and God’s insistence that every last person from Amalek be wiped out. David’s refusal to kill Saul on the two occasions he had chances seems to be guided by knowledge and acceptance of this rule. You don’t kill a king. Period. That’s how David sees it, and he’s lived by this principle, even going so far as to endanger his own life in upholding this law. If he was prepared to die for this law, then it makes a lot of sense that he ruled against the Amalekite and ordered his men to put him to death. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
In sum, what may have gotten overlooked in this sequence of events is that this Amalekite youth/man was a follower of and/or adherent to the Israelite kings, both Saul and David (or at least he had been prepared to give his loyalty to David). While he’s compassionate to Saul on the one hand, on the other hand, he’s breaking a law that was widely known and observed, especially by those in power. The irony of the one Amalekite in the Bible with a speaking part being a decent person, compassionate and loyal, getting capital punishment for a non-Israelite law is jarring. But when you think about David and how passionate he was about his people, his God and his laws, it makes a lot of sense from his perspective too. A crime had been committed, a law he had risked his own life to preserve had been violated and for this, anyone, an Amalekite for certain, would die, but even if he was an Israelite soldier, the son of a convert to the God of Israel, and possibly also a follower of the God of Israel, the sentence wouldn’t have changed and the accused would have been found guilty and put to death. From the storytelling perspective, having him as an Amalekite and not an Israelite makes a lot more sense.
What gets lost in the story is that evidently, the youth’s father was a “ger,” which most likely means he was a convert to the God of the Israelites. That this could be allowed to happen when there is such a strict Biblical law mandating that all Amalekites must be killed seems to indicate that this Biblical instruction to kill them wasn’t known, i.e. the Torah was still unknown in the time of David. Otherwise, why doesn’t David just have him killed as soon as he says he’s from Amalek, as he is bound to do? This meant that anyone who wanted to convert and adopt the Israelite God could - and did. This group might also include Uriah the Hittite, original husband of Bathsheba, who would become one of David’s best soldiers a little later on. Either way, there was much more heterogeneity in the Israelite population than most believe.
What this story achieves, despite the ruthless ending, is to show a vignette of Israelite life in the time of David. King Saul, as the king of Israel, was the ruler over more than the twelve tribes. It looks like there were others from the local nations who joined the Israelites for an assortment of reasons, a beautiful woman named Bathsheba for Uriah, and for the father of the Amalekite, maybe it was the same, or maybe it was for spiritual or economic reasons. There’s no way to know. Even though Israel had its enemies, it is clear from an in depth look at this story, that the local nations had many people who found a way to coexist with the Israelites, even converting and accepting their God. It’s interesting that the modern State of Israel has more than 1 million Arab citizens today, keeping this tradition from the time of Saul and David alive. At no point in history was Israel for Jews/Israelites alone.
What else can we learn from this story? Should we be learning that the Palestinian people are the equivalent of Amalek and need to be wiped out? Clearly within the Palestinian population there are many “Amalekite soldiers,” trustworthy, loyal, honest and compassionate people. Equating the Palestinians with Amalek is a mistake. But what about Hamas? Do we need a David to kill every last one of them? The problem with equating Hamas to Amalek is that it makes answering the question an all-or-nothing proposition, either an Israeli massacre (I’m refraining from using the term genocide since we’re talking about a political group, not a nation), or a Hamas genocide of all the Jews in Israel (maybe also the non-Jewish citizens too). Amalek was Amalek because of their DNA. A person who was an Amalekite was born to Amalekite parents. But the Bible is telling us - surprisingly - that within that population, there were good people. They weren’t all trying to kill Israelites despite the earlier aggression from the exodus period. Most of them probably just wanted to live their lives without war. No one was born into Hamas. This is a critical difference. These are people who have been largely brainwashed into living a life of violence and hatred, through their schools, media and political leadership, whereas many thousands of Palestinians have rejected this message; perhaps not enough to have a critical mass to overthrow Hamas, but such people exist and many despise Hamas. Hamas exists because of their effective culture of destruction and hatred. I would argue this is much more dangerous than Amalek. Despite the Bible advising to kill all of Amalek, the fact is that Ancient Israelites lived in the same land with them until they disappeared as a nation, or migrated elsewhere, no one knows. That won’t happen with Hamas. No one is expecting Hamas to metamorphose into the Amalekite soldier, fighting for Israel, but at least the basic foundation for peace has to be what the Amalekite soldier showed, which is compassion for another human being who isn’t from your nation. Until that point comes - and it might never will - the King David/Biblical policy of wiping out the entire nation is anathema, while the Netanyahu policy of destroying Hamas makes a lot of sense.