Monday this week (now last week) the office lectionary featured one of, in my mind, the most troubling passages in scripture: I Samueal 15:1-3, 7-13. In this passage, God rejects Samuel as king, because God had commanded him, after he defeated the Amalekites, to utterly destroy them: man, woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. But Saul didn’t do this after God granted him victory. He utterly destroyed the people with the sword. But he took the king alive, along with the best of the sheep and oxen and fatlings and lambs — and in fact, all that was good. He only destroyed what was worthless. Taken at face value, this portrays a bloodthirsty, vengeful god (Amalek opposed God’s people on their way to the promised land). It portrays a god with no restraint, who does not value human life or the rest of creation. And to reject Saul as king, because he will not follow this dispicable command (though he seems to have slaughtered all the people he could catch except the king) just sort of caps off the whole mess for me.
Who would ever want to worship or follow a god like that?
The contrast is in the gospel, where Jesus is dying on the cross. That’s the God I recognize. The problem is, I don’t think we’re looking at two different gods. So how do I reconcile this?
In all honesty, with difficulty. Is this Solomon justifying the reign of his father David? I understand this strand of biblical history to have been written for his court. Is this God working with God’s people in a way they understand? Or God’s people working with their history in a way that makes sense to them? I tend to believe it’s likely something along these lines. But I don’t say this with any great assurance.
We’ve had our crusades in the Christian Church, as well as in our early heritage. And they don’t ring true to God for me. I know there are those who would disagree. Frankly, they tend to scare me. Jihad just doesn’t make a lot of God sense to me.
The Sunset Juggler (formerly The Dragon's Mouth) 
July 14, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Like John+, I’ve sometimes had difficulty reconciling the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. It’s easy to find stories, like this one in Samuel, to find a God of an “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”, but if we look we also see a God of great patients and forbearance. A God who does treat us like the wayward children we are, but always loving us. I am reminded in Genesis that even when God is booting Adam and Eve out of the Garden, he makes cloths for them to replace the fig leaves they’ve woven together before tossing them out. Tough love, but love none the less.
I read First Samuel 15:1-34, rather than just the shorter portions designated. In doing so it may have been easier for me to at least try and disregard the details of the task God had given Saul, that is the killing of all of the Amalekites, men, women, children and infants. And Saul does that without exception but for King Agag, but when it comes time to destroy all of the sheep and cattle he doesn’t comply. Saul’s confession to Samuel that he only kept the plunder because he was afraid of the people rings a bit hollow as he wasn’t afraid to build a monument in his own honor.
As a student of military history I didn’t find it unusual that Saul would capture and not kill King Agag. Throughout history it has been common for the foot soldier to be fodder for the cannons, but in many places and times officers and leaders of the opposing side were treated with a certain amount of respect. Part of the English’s beef with the American Colonists ragtag army was we tended to aim for the officers, which was rather bad form. This understanding explains King Agag’s thinking he would be spared when Samuel calls for him, only to learn Samuel is more than willing to carry out God’s instructions.
John+ notes that this passage was written for Solomon’s court, I’m not so sure that audience would have necessarily shared our horror at the idea of killing off every last one of Saul’s enemies. Rather they might understand it as making sure there was no one left to retaliate down the road.
If we can get past the specifics of the instructions God gave Saul, no small feat, then the issue here seems the same as that throughout the Old Testament and even the New Testament, do we do what God asks or do we choose to do something else. Had the daily selection gone on a bit further we would have read “But Samuel replied: Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice… Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king.” (I Samuel 15:22-23)