These passages open up a theological can of worms for some, at least to those theological liberals. Now I do not know if you know the genealogy of things, but Amalek was a grandson of Esau, and his descendants harried Israel frequently, and of course they did it coming out of Egypt, picking off the stragglers and the weak in the back of the line. So God swore, basically, a perpetual hatred against them and commanded them to be completely wiped out. And Israel failed to do this.
I mentioned Saul just a minute ago. He spared Agag, and apparently some of his progeny escaped, and we find they pop up again in Esther, where Esther and Mordecai have to deal with Haman, an Agagite, during the Persian Empire hundreds of years later. They have a tendency, these Amalekites, to take advantage of Israelite or Jewish weakness. They have this idea that you kick them when they are down. So every time Judah, especially, but also Israel had a period of weakness, the Amalekites would be the first ones there to try to take advantage of it.
Both of them are Edomite cities. And as I mentioned before, Amalek was part of Edom. God takes Esau to task for this penchant for violence against Jacob in the book of Obadiah, where He promises that in the Day of the Lord, in verse 18, no survivor shall remain of the house of Esau, which would include Amalek.
Now passages like these spur commentators to say stupid things like the God of the Old Testament is mean and vindictive, that He is hateful and unjust, He is warlike and cruel, and then they claim they prefer Jesus, the New Testament God over the Old Testament God, which is just wacky because they are the same Person.
How do we explain this? How do we explain this perpetual hatred? How do we explain His commands to wipe these nations out like Amalek and the Amorites and so forth? Well, Paul gives us a pretty good idea of how to do this in Romans 1 and in Romans 9. Let us start in Romans 1, verses 18 through 23. It is actually a pretty easy concept to understand, but people are pretty obtuse and they do not want to see how simple it can be.
What is he saying? He is saying people know. They know what is right. They know that there is a God. He has shown it to them. If they claim they do not know, they are lying; they are simply remaining willfully ignorant of that, and He says they have no excuse.
So they do not want to worship God because He places restrictions on them. He places responsibilities on them. They ignore His law. They ignore all the ways that He has shown that He is there and He is enforcing His way, and so God says they are without excuse. They have done it to themselves.
These passages give us a theological basis for God doing these things to the Amorites and the Amalekites and others. Paul's overall argument is that God is justified in what He does. I mean, that is pretty simple. God is justified in what He does. He does not do anything wrong. He does not do anything that is unfair or unrighteous. He is God! He sets all the rules. He lives by those rules. He has perfect character. Not only that, He is the Creator. He made us all. He made everything. He made His law known.
So these people are without excuse. They sinned in worshipping other gods, and they sinned in various other ways against others and certainly against His people Israel. And so they are guilty. And because they are guilty, God has every right as Judge of all to punish their iniquities in wrath. He is not being mean. He is giving them what they asked for because they failed to keep His law. They sinned.
And because He is God, He is totally sovereign. He can use whomever He wants to bring that wrath upon sinners. Sometimes He used the nation of Israel - the old nation or kingdom of Israel - to do that. They were His sword. They were the rod of the Lord, and they punished the Canaanites. Sometimes He used Assyria, and He used them to punish Israel; sometimes, to Habakkuk's dismay, He used the terrible … . . .
