This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’ . . . Then Saul attacked the Amalekites all the way from Havilah to Shur, near the eastern border of Egypt. He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. I Samuel 15: 2-3, 7-8.
As we continue reading in chapter 15 of First Samuel, the prophet Samuel condemned Saul for not murdering King Agag. Saul had followed orders and murdered all the men except the king, and all the women and children of the Agagites, plus their cattle, sheep, camels and donkeys, but that was not good enough. Samuel announced that God would punish Saul for not murdering Agag by causing Saul to be overthrown as king. The reading ends with Samuel himself murdering Agag. This reading has obvious moral problems, to which I shall return in a minute.
On Purim night, this year Wednesday night, in synagogues throughout the world, we will read the Book of Esther, and hear again of the plot of the evil Haman to murder all the Jews of Persia, and how the Jews were saved by Queen Esther and her Uncle Mordechai. In the Book of Esther, Haman is introduced at chapter 3, verse 1 as "Haman the son of Hamadahtah the Agagite" - that is, the descendant of King Agag, who, we learned in chapter 15 of First Samuel, was the descendant of Amalek. And rabbis never cease to preach that every evil man who has sought to destroy the Jewish people, down to Adolf Hitler, has been the spiritual if not lineal descendants of Amalek and Agag.
(One may ask, if Saul murdered every man, women and child of the Agagites, and Samuel murdered Agag, how could Agag have any descendants? There is a midrash, alluded to in the Babylonian Talmud Megillah 13b, that Agag fathered a child during the time between his capture by Saul's army and his execution at the hands of Samuel.)
Back to the obvious moral problem with murdering every man, woman, child and domesticated animal of a militarily defeated nation. At I Samuel 15:5, we read, according to the standard translation:
Saul went to the city of Amalek and set an ambush in the ravine.
The Hebrew of the words I put in Italics, vayarev banachal, is noted in my Hebrew-English Bible "Meaning of Hebrew uncertain." My English translation of the Talmud, Yoma 22b, translates these words as "and he strove in the valley" and explains:
"And he strove in the valley." Rabbi Mani said: "Because of what happened ‘in the valley’: When the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Saul: 'Now go, attack the Amalekites' he [Saul] said [to God]: 'If on account of one person the Torah said: Perform the ceremony of the heifer whose neck is to be broken [Numbers chapter 19] how much more [ought consideration to be given] to all these persons! And if human beings sinned, what have the cattle committed; and if the adults have sinned, what have the children done?' A divine voice came forth and said: 'Be not righteous overmuch.'
Abraham, who in Genesis 18:22-32 disputed God's plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorroh, was the first to question God's concept of justice. Saul, as quoted in the Talmud by Rabbi Mani, followed the teachings of our father Abraham. In the 18th Century, Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev famously argued with God on Yom Kippur, telling God that, while we Jews may have sinned during the previous year, You too God, have sinned against the Jewish people by allowing the Jews to suffer persecution. Nor was Rebbe Levi Yitzchok acting in rebellion to Jewish teaching, for, as the Talmud, Bava Metzia 59 famously recounts:
If someone cuts an earthenware oven into ring-shaped pieces, and rebuilds the oven putting sand between the pieces, Rabbi Eliezer declared it ritually pure, but the sages declared it impure. . . . Rabbi Eliezer . . . said to them, "If the law is in accordance with me, let this carob tree prove it." The carob tree uprooted and walked from its place one hundred cubits, some say four hundred cubits. They said to him, "One does not bring proof from a carob tree." He then said to them, "If the law is in accordance with me, let the channel of water prove it." The channel of water turned and flowed uphill. They said to him, "Proof cannot be brought from a channel of water either." Rabbi Eliezer then said to the sages, "If the law is in accordance with me, let the walls of the House of Study prove it." The walls of the House of Study shook and were about to fall. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananiah rebuked the walls, saying to them, "If Talmudic scholars argue with one another about Jewish law, what affair is it of yours?" The walls did not fall out of respect for Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananiah, nor did they straighten out of respect for Rabbi Eliezer ben Hurcanus, but remain leaning to this day.
Rabbi Eliezer then said to them, "If the law is in accordance with me, let it be proven by a Voice of Heaven." Suddenly a Voice from Heaven went forth and proclaimed to the Sages, "Why are you disputing Rabbi Eliezer? The law is in accordance with him in all circumstances!" Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananiah rose to his feet and proclaimed, [Deuteronomy 30:12] "The Torah is not in Heaven!" What did Rabbi Yehoshua mean? Rabbi Yirmeyah said in reply, "Since God already gave the Torah on Mount Sinai, we no longer pay attention to Heavenly Voices. For You, God, already wrote in the Torah at Mount Sinai, [Exodus 23:2] 'After the majority you will incline.'" . . . . God smiled and said, "My children have defeated me, my children have defeated me."
God's command to Saul to murder every man, woman and child of the Amalekites, and their cattle as well, was wrong, and Saul, as recounted in the Talmud if not in the Bible, was right to question God. Today religious fanaticism has acquired a foothold in one of America's two national parties, and prominent party activists purport to tell us what God commands and deign to inform us that we may not question God's will, even if our own moral sense teaches us that their God, as they claim to proclaim His will, is wrong. We must be resolute in standing up to these self-proclaimed self-righteous moralists and their morally corrupt Leader as we try to preserve a nation where there will be justice and love for all, and thereby do God's work on earth.
I greatly fear that Trump will order those whom he calls “my generals” to round up as many political opponents as they possibly can and thereby destroy what is left of our democracy. Trump may issue such orders if and when Mueller indicts Trump and/or those closest to him. Or he may issue such orders if the Democrats manage to take both houses of Congress in November. We can only hope that our generals resist such orders, as Abraham and Saul (according to the rabbinic retelling) resisted God’s orders.
Shabbat Shalom