Divine Rules of Engagement
1 Samuel 15:1–11

We will continue our study in 1 Samuel, although we are not going to start in 1 Samuel 15 tonight.

We are going to start in Deuteronomy 20 as part of our review, and the last part of our study on what the Bible teaches about so called “holy war.” I want to review this. We are going to get into the main text of 1 Samuel 15 this evening, ending up with one of the most significant couple of verses in the chapter and in the Old Testament, I think.

We need to focus on 1 Samuel 15:22–23 where Samuel is going to tell Saul that rebellion is as of the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness is the sin of divination and idolatry. That is so important to understand. That is a very significant doctrine. We will be setting up for that before we get into it. The backdrop to understanding the passage is this question about so called “holy war” in the Bible.

If you are ever talking to people, this is a question that comes up:

 

Is there such a thing as a biblical holy war?

How can God be justified in calling for the annihilation of a people?

 

We have taken the time to think about this. For a quick review:

 

1. The term “holy war” is not used in the Bible and is not one we should use.

This is a term in the English that came along really late. The idea of “holy war,” even in Latin, reflected ideas in the Crusades, ideas related to what Islam was, but it is not an adequate term. It should not be used because it is not an adequate term.

 

2. The biblical term is chērem, meaning to ban, destroy, or to devote something to God.

I have pointed this out looking at the Hebrew dictionaries:

 

The meaning of chērem, from Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament says it is:

“… the exclusion of an object from the use or abuse of man.”

This, as I have reflected on this more and more, is really central. We are not going to see the Israelites taking plunder from the Canaanites. It is not to enrich them. It is not for their personal benefit, either spiritually, materially, economically, or any other way.

 

The New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis says it is:

“Consecration for service to God …”

 

This has to do with God’s judgment on these reprobate, perverse cultures. God has given them grace upon grace upon grace.

 

What happens when you come at this from human viewpoint you are looking at this and asking, “Why does God want these people slaughtered?”

We have to stop and think about who God is. He is righteous and He is just. That means that in His dealings with His creatures, whatever He ultimately does has to be consistent with His righteousness and His justice.

 

Somebody will ask, “Well, what about His love?” His love is always in relation to His righteousness and justice. God does not just overlook our sin because He is a nice guy and because He just wants to love us. God is not a permissive God. God is a God whose righteousness and justice must first be satisfied. The demands of His justice reflect the values and the standards of His righteousness. God’s righteousness expresses the absolute perfect standard of His character. His justice is the application of that to His creatures. But because God is also love, often when people think in terms of human viewpoint, they set these up as being mutually contradictory.

 

What the Bible shows is that these work together in a complimentary fashion so that out of His love He devised a plan whereby His righteousness could be satisfied. His justice, therefore, could also be satisfied because the legal payment for sin was taken care of and that is what happens at the Cross. Then God is free, by virtue of the fact that the legal penalty for sin is taken care of, to bless His creatures through this provision of His salvation. If it is accepted, then His justice and righteousness are satisfied and He is free to shower His grace blessings upon His creatures.

 

But for those who continue year after year, decade after decade, century after century, generation after generation to flaunt His grace, to rebel against Him, to ignore Him, to deny Him, to worship other gods, then eventually, as they deteriorate and degenerate into some of the most horrible civilizations we have ever seen, as that happens, eventually God means to intervene and bring an end to what is essentially a malignant growth, that if allowed to continue could threaten the very existence of the human race.

 

This is the backdrop and without a true understanding of the character of God and a true understanding of how God in His sovereignty governs over all mankind we cannot know. We have to remember that mankind is not just accidental creatures that popped up as a result of millions of years of accidental mutations; that mankind is specifically created by God to reflect who He is.

 

Genesis 1:26–27 says that we are created in the image and likeness of God. As image bearers we are created for a purpose and that is to reflect Him. Our purpose is to glorify Him. When we violate that and we live on our own in rebellion against Him, eventually there are going to be consequences that come. As the Creator of mankind, Creator of the universe, He has the right, He has the responsibility and the authority to execute His justice in whatever way He determines is best because He alone is omniscient. He knows all of the facts.

 

As a result of that in God’s will He ordered this chērem, this annihilation of certain restricted peoples. In contrast to the Christian Crusades, which went against everything that is taught in the New Testament, Islam is doing everything consistent with its foundational principles and what is stated in the Koran. The Christian Crusades went against everything.

 

When people raise this issue “Well, there was a lot of injustice on the part of Christians.” Yes, you are right. There was a lot of injustice because they violated the standards and foundation of the revelation of God. But what we have in Islam is just the opposite. It is the consistent application of what the Koran says.

 

If we take the term that is applied for jihad or “holy war” and transfer that to what we see in the Old Testament, we are at the very beginning presuppositionally changing what was going on. These are some of the differences that I was hoping to bring out.

 

3.      The core idea in chērem is to consecrate something to God because it is being judged. This is something serious and significant spiritually.

The Israelites were functioning as the instrument of God. Therefore, they had to perform in a manner that conformed to the righteousness of God. One of these distinctions we will see in Deuteronomy 20. It is that there were no personal benefits, no spiritual benefit that accrued to anyone because they participated in chērem. There was no personal plunder that came to them.

 

That is a quick review of those first three points. I want to develop out a little more the ninth and tenth points that I covered a couple of weeks ago. To do that I want to look at Deuteronomy 20, which gives us the principles, the guidelines for warfare, not in general, but as it relates to specifically the warfare of God’s chosen people in terms of the warfare that God has called them to.

 

During this limited period of history from the Conquest in roughly 1406 B.C. through the last period of Saul’s kingship, 1 Samuel 15, which we are studying now. The rules of engagement are laid out in Deuteronomy 20, specifically in Deuteronomy 20:16–18. It is applied only to specific tribes of Canaanites that lived in the land. It was not for everybody. In contrast jihad is to cause everybody in the world to submit to Allah.

 

The Christian Crusades were basically an absolute destructive force. Originally they were to free the religious sites in the Middle East from being destroyed by the Moslems, but it quickly degenerated and there were many abuses. They not only attacked Moslems. They decided to attack and destroy Jews, and “Well, let’s kill anybody that gets in our way.” It degenerated into a general mille. It had nothing at all to do with any higher values of righteousness at all. But that is not what we see described in Deuteronomy 20.

 

We are looking at Deuteronomy 20. Let me give you the outline:

 

Deuteronomy 20:1–4: God gives the general principles. This is the overview. The main theme in the first four verses is “Don’t be afraid.” You are going to go into war, but the primary directive is “Do not be afraid.” The reason is because the God who brought you out of Egypt is going to be the God who gives you victory. God has promised and He will make it so.

 

Deuteronomy 20:1, “When you go out to battle against your enemies, and see horses and chariots and people more numerous than you …”

You are outnumbered. You are outgunned. You are going to be against those who have a better tactical and strategic advantage. They have better military training. They are more numerous. “Do not be afraid of them.” That is the prime thing.

 

“… for the Lord your God is with you, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.” 2 So it shall be, when you are on the verge of battle that the priest shall approach and speak to the people.”

 

It is not just a military conquest where the general is going to come out and give a pep talk to the troops like Patton at the beginning of the film Patton. It is the high priest who comes out, which casts everything that is done within the framework of the Mosaic Covenant and the promise of God to give the land to His people, which goes back to the Abrahamic Covenant. It is therefore part of God’s plan and purpose for Israel and is restricted to that.

He says to them in Deuteronomy 20:3, “Hear, O Israel: Today you are on the verge of battle with your enemies.”

 

He starts off with the same phrase that you have in Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” It is shāma‛. In Hebrew the word shāma‛ is the word to listen or to hear, but it does not refer to just having your auditory nerves stimulated.

 

I do not know if you have ever had a situation where you tell somebody something and they say “Okay, I got it.” And you say, “No, you really did not hear me.” What you are saying is what the Bible is saying. Hearing means not just saying, “Yes, I understood the vocabulary and I can tell you what you said.” But it means to do what I said. That is what God said. When God said, “Hear, O Israel …” He is saying do what I am telling you to do. That becomes an idiom that enters into English as well.

 

“Today you are on the verge of battle with your enemies. Do not let your heart faint…”

 

Notice here that God says four things:

 

Do not become softhearted. Do not give into your emotions in the middle of battle. There is a time for war and a time for peace. That is what the writer of Ecclesiastes said. There is a time when you have to do harsh things in life. As a parent you need to discipline your children at times. In other areas of life there are times when if you are an employer you may have to call an employee in. You may have to correct them. You may have to fire them. There are different circumstances. You cannot just give in because you are a softhearted.

 

The basic Hebrew verb for fear is yārē'.

 

This is the Hebrew word is chāphaz. In some places it is translated “do not flee.” In other passages it is translated “do not be afraid.” It is a synonym for fear and living on the basis of your fear, acting on the basis of your fear.

 

“Terrified” again is another synonym for fear, ‛ārats. It means don’t be awed or frightened or panicked or overcome by terror.

 

All these phrases together reinforce each other and mean do not give into your emotions. We can be in a lot of circumstances where we have a lot of emotions. Emotions can range from sorrow and sadness to excitement. Emotions can run from fear and worry. We do not take counsel of our fears or our worry or our anger or our sorrow or our sadness. There is nothing wrong in and of itself with those emotions. What is wrong is when we use those emotions as a rationalization or justification for sin.

 

Jesus went through emotional distress the night before He went to the cross. We looked at a word Sunday morning in our study of 2 Corinthians 5 that was used to describe Jesus in the Garden, LUPEO. He had these emotions generated, because He was a true human being, as He anticipated the physical torture, the physical pain, as well as the spiritual suffering that He would endure on the cross as the perfect Lamb of God, was impacted by our sin when it was imputed to Him. Yet He did not sin. Jesus had emotional turmoil, but He did not turn from God’s plan or God’s objective.

 

It is very important to understand that we face emotional trauma. You may even have panic attacks as you face certain things, but it is what you do with it. I see so many people that have an undercurrent of anger in their soul. That is often because anger is the most simplistic form. Anger is often the result of not getting your way. If somebody prevents you from doing what you want to do then the immediate response of our sin nature is anger.

If that anger goes on for a period of time then you become more and more angry. If you get in circumstances where, let’s say, you are working for a long period of time in an environment where you are facing unjust criticism or injustice. You do not get a kind of a pay raise or recognition or anything. You really desire to go somewhere in that career, but you are not getting anything, then you can start developing anger because somebody is keeping you from getting what you want.

 

Eventually, if that becomes perceived that you are never going to get the career, and your hope is not based on eternal things but on temporal results, then you can start becoming depressed. If you act on these emotions, because you do not understand where they are coming from or how you are supposed to apply the spiritual skills to those emotions, then you are going to end up in a state of spiritual distress. All kinds of other problems are going to result from that.

 

This is what God is addressing here. If you keep your eyes on God, who is going to solve the problems, who is greater than any of the enemies that you face in life even if you are in a battle, God is going to be the One who is going to give you the victory, but you have to trust in Him. You not only have to do the right thing, but you have to do the right thing the right way.

 

One of the sad things that we have in Christianity today are a lot of people who think that they just do what the Bible says any way they want to. You see it in evangelism. There are right ways and wrong ways. There are biblical ways and non-biblical ways to do evangelism. There are biblical ways and non-biblical ways to worship. There are biblical ways and non-biblical ways to pray. Just because it makes you feel good does not mean it is right. We have to do the right thing the right way, otherwise it is wrong.

 

This is how the Israelites are being instructed at the beginning. This is the instruction of the priest.

 

You have an army going into war. They are being led and directed by their religious leader who is directing their attention to the spiritual issues that are involved. The priest gives them these four commands that relate to not being afraid.

 

Then the priest explains it in Deuteronomy 20:4, “for the LORD your God is He who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.” It begins with the English word “for” that reflects a preposition in the Hebrew that indicates “cause.” The priest is telling you why you are not to do this. “Yahweh your God is He who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.” It puts the ultimate deliverance not on technique.

 

This is what you get with psychology today. Everybody is so psychologized in our culture. It is technique and even beyond that it is medication. But Scripture says it is the right technique. It is not the techniques that are generated by going through various experiments and observations in empiricism. It is the technique of trusting the Lord. What we call the faith-rest drill, trusting in God, mixing our faith with the promises of God.

 

God is the One who fights for us against our enemies “to save you.” The word “save” is not talking about eternal salvation. It is talking about deliverance and victory within the combat of the chērem war.

 

Then starting in Deuteronomy 20:5 we see that God begins to establish limitations on who could fight. Not every adult male in Israel was expected to fight. There is a certain amount of wisdom here.

 

Often, if you look at these, you might think it is pretty lenient. God is really relaxed. He is letting a lot of conscientious objectors off the hook. In a way He is because He wants to make sure that those who were engaged in this type of warfare are those that are truly conformed and applying His Word. They are trusting Him. If you are not trusting God to give you the victory then you are going to be afraid. You are going to be terrified. You are going to tremble. You are going to panic and all of those other things.

 

Deuteronomy 20:5, “Then the officers shall speak to the people, saying: ‘What man is there who has built a new house and has not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man dedicate it.’ ”

 

We look at Deuteronomy 20:5 and there are certain distractions that you need to be careful of because if you are going to go to war, the warriors need to not be distracted by legitimate concerns at home. Moses says first of all that if someone is recently moved into a new house but have not dedicated it, “let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man dedicate it.” In other words, they are still in the process of establishing this house. In the ancient world most of these houses and properties were income-producing properties. This is a new venture. He is still focused on getting it all stabilized and squared away.

 

The Scriptures says not to distract him if he is in a new house and has not dedicated it. The dedication would come within a fairly short time, within the first year. This shows that this is something new. His attention, his focus is divided. Let him go home.

 

God is not saying that he should not do that. God does not make an issue out of it. God says that if that is the case to let him go home. Do not put the man in a double bind situation where he is expected to do something that is probably beyond anyone’s capability. “Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man dedicate it.”

 

Then there are other examples:

Deuteronomy 20:6, “Also what man is there who has planted a vineyard and has not eaten of it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man eat of it.”

 

This is not somebody who has had a vineyard for a while, but somebody who is just starting out. They are establishing a business. Do not wipeout their business before it gets started. It is a very pro business, pro capitalism type of mandate. This man is just starting a business. Let him run the business. Let him get established. Do not wipe out his source of revenue and his source of income. Do not wipe out his wealth at the time. If he has planted a vineyard and he has not enjoyed its fruit or production, then let him stay.

 

Deuteronomy 20:7, “And what man is there who is betrothed to a woman and has not married her? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man marry her.”

 

If he has just gotten engaged his mind is filled with love. He is not going to be good in combat. Do not let him to go into combat. Let him establish his family. Let him marry. If he has just gotten engaged let him marry. Let him begin to produce children so that his line goes on. See, it is understanding the divine institutions of the importance of family and the importance of marriage.

 

All of these stipulations relate back to reaffirming those basic divine institutions. Then some further restrictions are given. We look at Deuteronomy 20:8, “The officers shall speak further to the people, and say, ‘What man is there who is fearful and fainthearted.’ ”

 

You may have heard someone say that if you are fearful and fainthearted you have to be tough. You need to go into the military anyway. You need to serve. But here the Scripture says that if you are fearful and fainthearted, go home. That is fine. We do not need you. We do not want you.

 

You do not want to be drafted, fine. We want people who are going to trust the Lord. Look at this in context. We want those who are going to trust the Lord so that we would rather have three hundred men with Gideon who trust the Lord than thirty two thousand where most of them do not trust the Lord. Then you are going to have a problem.

 

I said this after my experience at my first church as a pastor. That I would rather have ten people who really wanted to study the Word and wanted to grow, than a church of three hundred, four hundred, or five hundred where 90% of them were there because “Oh, we like the music program. We are here because you have a good youth program. You take care of our kids. We are here for all kinds of other reasons.”

 

You see this often. There are churches in this city that have junior choirs that are bigger than our church. There are churches in this city that have choirs that will seat eight hundred, nine hundred, or a thousand people. They have beautiful music, but the people go to those churches for the music and go for the singing. They will have orchestras. It is beautiful.

 

There is nothing wrong with that. But the trouble is most of those people who are there for the music and everything that is associated with it, they do not give a rip about learning the Bible. They are there because it gives them a place to express their talents. I do not want them. They are just going to cause problems.

 

That is what God is saying. You are going to be afraid? I do not want you. You are going to be a problem. Go home. If you are fearful and fainthearted—“let him go and return to his house, lest the heart of his brethren faint like his heart.” He is also going to be a bad influence on others.

Deuteronomy 20:9, “And so it shall be, when the officers have finished speaking to the people, that they shall make captains of the armies to lead the people.” In other words, they are organized and make divisions.

 

Deuteronomy 20:10, “When you go near a city to fight against it, then proclaim an offer of peace to it.”

 

This introduces the next section that deals with the rules of engagement. These are the rules of engagement that we see. There are two sections to this.

Deuteronomy 20:17 talks about the Canaanites as being comprised of the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites. There were a few other “ites” who were there as well.

 

Deuteronomy 20:10, go into the city. Send in a messenger under a white flag, a truce flag. Say everybody will live if you will surrender to us. You make an offer of peace. But what happens if they say “No, we are going to fight”?

 

Deuteronomy 20:11, “And it shall be that if they accept your offer of peace, and open to you, then all the people who are found in it shall be placed under tribute to you, and serve you.”

 

Tribute means that you are going to be able to tax them. That is going to benefit you. Remember, in chērem there is no benefit financially, economically, or in any other way to Israel. But these are the non-Canaanite people. They can be placed under tribute and they will be a source of tax revenue for you.

 

Deuteronomy 20:12 tells us what will happen if the city will not make peace. “Now if the city will not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it.” The Israelites are going to capture it.

 

Deuteronomy 20:13 says that when the LORD gives it to you, you shall kill every male with the edge of the sword. That is in contrast to chērem, where every man, woman, child and nursing infant is annihilated. In this case only the men are annihilated. Why? To prevent future rebellion. These would be the males of military age.

 

Deuteronomy 20:14, “But the women, the little ones, the livestock, and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall plunder for yourself; and you shall eat the enemies’ plunder which the Lord your God gives you.”

 

See, in a chērem there is no plunder. But this is not chērem. This is dealing with those outside of the land, but who may be enemies of Israel. They are to be plundered. Then the women, the children, and the livestock; all of that is still there to benefit the Israelites.

 

Deuteronomy 20:15, “Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far from you, which are not of the cities of this nation.” Not the ones that are near that are in the land.

 

Deuteronomy 20:16, “But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive.”

 

That is a pretty inclusive list. Nothing that breathes, cats, dogs, mice, sheep, goats, cattle, men, women, children, nursing infants. It seems really harsh, but God is obliterating the cancer. It is His judgment on these people. Remember, God told Abraham that He would take his descendants out of the land for over 400 years to give these people 400 years.

 

Let me see. It is AD 2016. 400 years ago was AD 1616. That is a long time. People were just barely beginning to colonize in America at that time. Think about that. For 400 years God allowed this Canaanite civilization to reach its full sin potential and to fully become rotten. Now He is going to bring judgment because they have had opportunity after opportunity to turn to God. They have rejected that. Nothing remains alive.

 

God does not do that with every civilization. He did not do that with the Chinese. He did not do that with the Indian civilizations that were Hindu. He did not do that with the extremely pagan Japanese or the Koreans or the Russians or any other. He does that only with a few people because these are the people who were in the land that God has promised to Israel. It is related to His plans and purposes for Israel, which means His plans and purposes for the Seed, for the Messiah, and ultimately for the establishment of the Kingdom.

 

If you do not grasp that whole framework then it is going to be real easy to look at this and say that God is sort of an arbitrary, hostile, violent God. But once you understand what God is doing and why, then it makes sense. It no longer allows for the rationalization against the character of God.

Deuteronomy 20:17, “… but you shall utterly destroy them, ...” That is our word chērem. You shall chērem them. “… the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you”. That is the mitswā[h]. That is what God commands. That is what we do. Why? Because if it comes from God, it is right. There is a reason. It is not just pure judgment.

 

Deuteronomy 20:18, “… lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God.”

 

Ultimately it is the spiritual. What happens? What happens when they go into land is they originally take out the major cities and the major areas of occupation: Jericho, Ai, cities in the north, and cities in the south. But then if you read through the first chapter of Judges you see that initially they are consistent and obey the Lord. They kill everybody, but then they quit. They start compromising. They leave groups and cities alive.

 

What happens historically is that those Canaanites began to influence the Israelites so that by the time you get a hundred years past the period of the conquest and you are into the first couple of judges’ cycles, you see that the Israelites are beginning to think and act like Canaanites because they are being influenced.

 

We learn that God was absolutely right. If you do not remove those elements that influence you in a sinful rebellious direction, if you do not remove those temptations, if you do not get rid of the chocolate cake and ice cream that is in your refrigerator when you are going on a diet, you will not survive the first two days.

 

It is the same principle. If you do not remove the sources of evil and temptation from your culture, then they will influence the next coming generations, and you will self-destruct. This is what happened then and we are seeing it happen in our culture and our civilization.

 

Deuteronomy 20:19–20, “When you besiege a city for a long time, while making war against it to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them;”

 

God is an environmentalist. Who knew? Right? He is saying that if you destroy all the trees that are surrounding these cities, then that will come back and hurt you in the long run. Leave the trees there. Treat God’s creation with respect in terms of what it is going to be used.

 

The rational here is not the pagan rational of the modern environmentalism movement, which is really worshiping the creation and not the Creator. It is a recognition that God created the natural resources for us to use to improve our civilization. If in warfare you go and destroy all the natural resources, then when the war is over with you are not going to have anything to develop when you rebuild. They were not supposed to destroy the trees.

 

Incidentally, when you go to Israel today there are a lot of places you go and you do not see a lot of trees. You go into some areas and you see a lot of trees. There has been a press for reforestation in Israel for at least 50 years. I remember when I was a kid seeing commercials on television. A lot of you remember this, too. You still see them. The commercials ask to donate so much money and they will plant trees in Israel. They have planted millions and millions of trees.

 

Up until the time when the Israelis began to go back into the land, starting with the first and second Aliyah at the end of the 19th century and 20th century. As they went back they had these swamps that were just feted. These horrible swamps where there was malaria and all kinds of mosquito-borne diseases. They had to drain the swamps. They had to do a tremendous amount of work to make the land useable again.

 

The other thing they had to do was start planting trees. Trees would be helpful for irrigation and to maintain the soil. It is important for the production of CO2. Of course modern environmentalists are against the production of CO2. They do not understand that CO2 is what plants love. It makes them grow and makes them green.

 

In the period, as part of God’s judgment against Israel, during the worst period during the late Middle Ages, from the middle of the 16th century in AD 1519, when Jerusalem was captured by the Ottomans and the Turks. You had the beginning of the Ottoman Empire that existed until 1918, the end of WWI. What was the policy of the Ottoman Empire?

 

The policy of the Ottoman Empire was to tax your property on the basis of the trees that were on the property. If you had a property that was covered with forest, then you wanted to cut it all down so that you would not have to pay all those extra taxes. This was a policy that led to the destruction of the trees, of the vegetation, and of the forests.

 

By the time Mark Twain came to Palestine in the mid-19th century, Palestine was the geographical term for that administrative district within the Ottoman Empire, he said that Israel was just barren. It was like a desert everywhere. In some of the pictures that you see from the late 19th century there are no trees anywhere. The trees are gone. Why? Nobody wanted to pay the taxes.

 

This was a way in which God brought judgment on the land and made it barren. Now that has all been changing. God makes a point out of this. Do not cut down the trees when you attack the city.

 

Deuteronomy 20:20, “Only the trees which you know are not trees for food you may destroy and cut down, to build siege works against the city that makes war with you, until it is subdued.”

 

Some trees are going to be date palms and other trees good for production, fruit trees, keep those. Other trees you can use to use for lumber to build your siege engines. There is a solid rational behind the whole concept of chērem warfare. It was only for those groups and one other group, the Amalekites. Why the Amalekites? Because of their opposition to Israel when they first came out of Egypt. God pronounced a judgment upon them at that time. That is the backdrop for our opening in 1 Samuel 15.

 

Turn to 1 Samuel 15 and we will work through the first part of the chapter to set ourselves up for understanding 1 Samuel 15:22–24. These verses are crucial for a lot of different reasons that we will get into next week.

 

It starts off with Samuel coming to Saul. Samuel gives him a command from the Lord. 1 Samuel 15:1–3 gives Saul’s operation order. He is going into combat and this is what you are going to do. Samuel reminds Saul that the Lord sent him to anoint him king over his people. What is Samuel really saying? Saul, you are under God’s authority.

 

Think about where we are going in the story. When we get down to 1 Samuel 15:22–23 Samuel will say:

 

“Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord?


Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.”

 

From the very first verse in this story we are reminded God is the authority over Saul. He is not an autonomous ruler. The rulers in Israel were under the rule of Law and under the authority of God.

 

1 Samuel 15:1, “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over His people, over Israel.” Now listen, shāma‛, to heed. That means do not just hear the words and have your eardrum stimulated, but do what God says to do. “Heed (hear) the voice of the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts ...”

 

This is a reminder of who God is. He is the Commander of the armies of Israel. The word “hosts” is an antiquated term for army. The word tsevā’ȏth is still part of the title for the armies of Israel (tsevā’ȏth Haganah Yisrā’ēl). It is the forces of the armies of Israel.  

 

“Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel…’ ” That is going back to Exodus 17—what Amalek did to Israel, ‘how he ambushed him on the way when he came up from Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have.’ ” That is the word chāram, wipe it all out and make sure they understand that. ‘… and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’ ” In other words, everything that takes a breath.

 

On this map we have Amalek down here in the South. They were a migratory group. They had some cities, but they dominated down in the Negev. Negev is the Hebrew word for South. They covered the south area. (Slide 13)

 

1 Samuel 15:3. Then the LORD says to attack. The word for attack is the Hebrew word nākâ. That means to smite. That was the old King James version, “smite the people.” It is in the hiphel stem, which means it is causative. The Lord caused them to be smitten, be killed. Go attack. It is not just attack them. It has that idea of killing them. Then “utterly destroy” which is chāram, ban, devote all that they have. Do not spare them.

 

There are these various groups around Israel, the Arameans, the Philistines, the Ammonites and Moabites, the Edomites, and down in the south is Amalek. Those rules for chāram did not apply to these other groups because they were the nonindigenous people in the Promised Land. But it is going to apply to Amalek because of what happened in Exodus 17.

 

We have passages: Numbers 13:29, the Amalekites dwelling in the land of the South in the Negev, the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites. We just saw that list. Those are the peoples, the Canaanites that are going to be under the ban. They dwell in the mountains. That is the center hill country. You can see on this map (Slide 14).

 

This center ridge goes from the hill country of Judea in the south and up the hill country of Samaria. That is the backbone of Israel. That is where the Hittites, Jebusites, which lived in Salem, which is now Jerusalem. The Amorites are in the mountains. “The Canaanites dwell by the sea and along the banks of the Jordan.” The area along the Mediterranean Sea between Phoenicia in the north and Philistia in the south is called the Shephelah. It is the coastal plains. Then along the Jordan River is where the Canaanites lived.

 

Exodus 17 tells the story of the battle of when Moses had his arms held up by Aaron and Hur. As long as Moses held his arms up God gave them the victory. Then Moses instituted a memorial and gave God another name, “The Lord is my Banner”. The verse to look at is Exodus 17:16 “Because the Lord has sworn: Yahweh will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.” That starts in Exodus 17.

 

In Deuteronomy 25:19 Moses says, “Therefore it shall be, when the LORD your God has given you rest from the enemies all around, in the land which the LORD your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance, that you will blot out the remembrance of Amalek.”

 

What is the order of events?

 

When we look at the next six verses, 1 Samuel 15:4–9, what we see is Saul’s actions. We saw the marching order, the operation order. That you, Saul, are to go, take the army and wipe everybody out. Now we are going to see what Saul does. It is very clear that this is all on Saul. Notice what we see:

1 Samuel 15:4, “So Saul gathered …”

1 Samuel 15:5, “And Saul came …”

1 Samuel 15:6, “Then Saul said …”

1 Samuel 15:7, “And Saul attacked …”

1 Samuel 15:8, “He (Saul) also took Agag king of the Amalekites …”

1 Samuel 15:9, “But Saul and the people spared Agag …”

Those six verses are all about Saul and laying the responsibility on Saul, Divine Institution #1, and personal accountability to God, personal volition.

 

We see in 1 Samuel 15:4–5 that “Saul gathered the people together and numbered them in Telaim, two hundred thousand foot soldiers and ten thousand men of Judah.”

 

A note here, in Modern Hebrew studies and in Modern Old Testament studies there is great debate over what the Hebrew word ’eleph means. Does that really mean thousand or does it mean a clan or does it mean a large group? The trend in most of our human viewpoint Old Testament studies is that this is not a thousand.

 

I was very pleased last week. Last week we covered the archeology on Ai, and the week before on Jericho. Right now there has been a team of three men who conducted through most of June an excavation at et-Tell, which I was making a case for last week. That this is the location for biblical Ai, which is a more traditional view.

 

In recent years the Biblical Research Associates under Bryant Wood have argued for a site close to that, Khirbet el-Maqatir. But last week, the day after I taught this on Tuesday night, on Wednesday morning I got an e-mail from Joel Kramer. They have completed their work. He said that they found hundreds of examples of Late Bronze and Middle Bronze pottery in our excavation of et-Tell.

 

That is important because the view of the other side, and they are solid Bible believers, too. I keep wanting to impress that. It is that they have taken the conclusions of some of the excavations in the 1950s, which said there was no evidence of occupation at et-Tell through the Middle or Late Bronze periods. That countered what John Garstang found in 1928. It countered what these guys found in just the last two or three weeks.

 

That was great news. The other thing I had asked him a question about. I said, “Are you guys in agreement in all of this contemporary discussion that ’eleph, the Hebrew word translated a thousand, means a thousand: That the traditional understanding of that number is correct?”

 

Both guys answered me and said, “We have not seen any argument yet that comes close to convincing us that it means anything else (’eleph means one thousand.)” That is important to get out there for somebody like John down here who is going to study this in Hebrew. You do not buy that. Stick with the traditional view there.

 

Israel had 200,000 foot soldiers and 10,000 men of Judah. Remember, in the book of Numbers, when they took a census of all the men of fighting age, all the men over twenty years, fighting age, that they numbered the men in Israel. The total in Numbers 26:51 was 601,730 men.

 

This is one third of the possible fighting force in Israel. It is very possible that they are going after their greatest enemy, Amalek. It is not unreasonable. They have got 200,000 foot soldiers and 10,000 men of Judah. Saul comes to the city of Amalek, sets up an ambush, and he shows grace to the Kenites.

 

The Kenites had shown favor to Israel. The Kenites were related to Moses’ wife. In 1 Samuel 15:6 Saul gives them the opportunity to leave so that they do not get destroyed, which they did. Then we are told in 1 Samuel 15:7 that “Saul attacked the Amalekites from Havillah all the way to Shur, which is east of Egypt.”

 

Here is a map. Nobody is really sure where Havillah is located. It is probably in the area near Kadesh Barnea or south in the area between what is now Eilat, at Ezion-geber, somewhere in the area of the Wilderness of Paran. All this territory was pretty much being dominated by the Amalekites, even to the Wilderness of Shur, to the west of the Wilderness of Paran, and to the east of Egypt. The Amalekites have a long-running battle across the Sinai.

 

1 Samuel 15:8 Saul takes Agag alive. He utterly destroys all the people. But they spare Agag in 1 Samuel 15:9, “… and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs, and all that was good, and were unwilling to utterly destroy them. But everything despised and worthless, that they utterly destroyed.” If it was junk they destroyed it, but if it is going to make us rich, then we will rationalize it.

 

1 Samuel 15:10–11, then Samuel comes up and he is going to confront and indict Saul.

We will stop there. There are a couple of things that we have to talk about that are going to take a little more time than we have. We will come back next week and start with 1 Samuel 15:10.

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