Saul Spares Agag

Samuel now came to Saul and told him that he had been sent by God to remind him that God had chosen him above all others and appointed him king. He ought therefore to obey God and submit to his authority, bearing in mind that, though he ruled over the other tribes, God ruled over him and over all things. And so, Samuel said, God had this to say to him: “Because the Amalekites did the Hebrews a great deal of harm while they were in the wilderness, when, after coming out of Egypt, they were making their way to the country that is now their own, I command you to punish the Amalekites by making war on them. When you have conquered them, leave none of them alive, but go through every age, young and old, and kill them, beginning with the women and the infants, and exact this as the punishment for the harm they did to your forefathers. Spare nothing, neither donkeys nor any other animals, and keep none of them for your own use and possession, but devote them all to God, and, in obedience to the commands of Moses, blot out the name of Amalek entirely.” [a]

So Saul promised to do what he was commanded. Thinking that his obedience to God would be shown not only in making war on the Amalekites but still more fully in the readiness and speed of his actions, he made no delay but at once gathered all his forces. When he counted them at Gilgal, he found them to be about four hundred thousand Israelites, besides the tribe of Judah, for that tribe by itself numbered thirty thousand. Then Saul broke into the country of the Amalekites and set many men in ambush, in several parties, at the river, so that he might not only harm them by open fighting but also fall on them unexpectedly on the roads, and in this way surround them and kill them. When he joined battle with the enemy he beat them, and pursuing them as they fled he destroyed them all. When that undertaking had succeeded, just as God had foretold, he attacked the cities of the Amalekites. He besieged them and took them by force, partly with siege engines, partly with mines dug underground, and partly by building walls around them on the outside. Some they starved out by hunger and thirst, and some they won by other means. After all this he set about killing the women and the children, and he did not think he was acting barbarously or inhumanly in doing so: first, because it was enemies he was treating in this way, and second, because it was done by the command of God, whom it was dangerous to disobey. [c]

He also took Agag, the enemy king, captive. He so admired the beauty and the height of his body that he thought him worth saving. Yet this was not done according to the will of God, but by giving way to human feeling and letting himself be moved by an ill-timed pity, in a matter where it was not safe for him to indulge it. For God hated the nation of the Amalekites so much that he had commanded Saul to have no pity even on the infants, whom by nature we pity most; but Saul saved their king, the leader in all the harm done to the Hebrews, as if he valued the fine appearance of the enemy above the memory of what God had sent him to do. The people were guilty along with Saul, for they spared the herds and the flocks and took them as plunder, when God had commanded that they should not spare them. They also carried off the rest of the Amalekites’ wealth and riches; only what was not worth keeping did they destroy. When Saul had conquered all these Amalekites, who stretched from Pelusium in Egypt to the Red Sea, he laid waste all the rest of the enemy’s country. But he did not touch the nation of the Shechemites, although they lived in the very middle of the country of Midian; for before the battle Saul had sent to them and told them to leave, so that they would not share in the miseries of the Amalekites. He had good reason for saving them, since they were kin of Reuel, Moses’ father-in-law. [f]

Then Saul returned home rejoicing at the glorious things he had done and at the conquest of his enemies, as though he had neglected nothing the prophet had told him to do when he was going to war with the Amalekites, and as though he had carefully kept everything he ought to have done. But God was grieved that the king of the Amalekites had been kept alive and that the people had seized the cattle as plunder, because these things had been done without his permission. He thought it intolerable that they should conquer and overcome their enemies by the power he gave them, and that he himself should then be so grossly despised and disobeyed by them that not even a mere man who was a king would put up with it. So he told Samuel the prophet that he repented of having made Saul king, since Saul did nothing that he had commanded him but followed his own inclinations. When Samuel heard this he was deeply troubled, and he spent the whole night begging God to be reconciled to Saul and not to be angry with him. But God did not grant Saul the forgiveness the prophet asked for, not thinking it right to forgive such sins at his entreaty; for wrongs never grow so great as through the easy temper of those who are wronged, and those who chase a reputation for consideration and kindness breed these very sins without realizing it. [i]

So when God had rejected the prophet’s plea and it was plain that he regretted making Saul king, Samuel came to Saul at Gilgal at daybreak. When the king saw him, he ran to him, embraced him, and said, “I give thanks to God, who has given me the victory, for I have done everything he commanded me.” To this Samuel replied, “Then how is it that I hear the bleating of sheep and the lowing of cattle in the camp?” Saul answered that the people had kept them for sacrifices; but as for the nation of the Amalekites, it had been entirely destroyed, as he had been commanded to see done, and not one man was left. He had saved alive only the king, and had brought him to Samuel, so that, he said, they could consult together about what should be done with him. But the prophet said, “God is not delighted with sacrifices, but with good and righteous men, who follow his will and his laws and never think that anything they do is well done unless they do it as God has commanded them. He counts himself insulted, not when someone fails to sacrifice, but when someone shows himself disobedient to him. From those who do not obey him, nor pay him the duty that is the one true and acceptable worship, he will not kindly accept their offerings, however many and however fat the victims they offer, and however ornate the gifts they bring him, even if those gifts were made of gold and silver; he will reject them and count them signs of wickedness, not of piety. He is delighted with those who keep in mind this one thing and this only: how to do whatever God declares or commands them to do, and who would rather die than break any of those commands. He does not even require a sacrifice from them; and when such people do sacrifice, even if it is a humble offering, he accepts it more gladly, as the honor paid him by poverty, than the offerings the richest men bring him. So understand that you are under the wrath of God, because you have despised and neglected what he commanded you. How then do you suppose he will look on a sacrifice made from things he has doomed to destruction? Unless perhaps you imagine that offering them in sacrifice to God is much the same as destroying them! Expect, then, that your kingdom will be taken from you, together with that authority which you have abused by such insolent behavior as to neglect the God who gave it to you.” Then Saul confessed that he had acted unjustly and did not deny that he had sinned, since he had broken the prophet’s instructions; but he said that it was out of dread and fear of the soldiers that he had not forbidden them and held them back when they seized the plunder. And he said, “But forgive me, and be gentle with me, for I will be careful not to offend in time to come.” He also begged the prophet to go back with him, so that he might offer his thank offerings to God; but Samuel went home, because he saw that God would not be reconciled to him.

But Saul was so eager to keep Samuel that he took hold of his cloak, and because Samuel was leaving so forcefully, the pull was violent and the cloak was torn. At this the prophet said that in the same way the kingdom would be torn from Saul, and a good and just man would take it; that God held firm to what he had decreed about him; and that to be changeable and shifting in what has been decided belongs to human passions only and does not befit the Divine Power. Then Saul said that he had been wicked, but what was done could not be undone. So he asked Samuel to honor him at least so far that the people might see him accompanying Saul to worship God. Samuel granted him this favor, went with him, and worshiped God. Agag, the king of the Amalekites, was also brought to him; and when the king asked how bitter death was, Samuel said, “As you have made many Hebrew mothers mourn and wail for the loss of their children, so by your death you will make your own mother mourn for you too.” Then he gave orders for him to be killed at once at Gilgal, and afterward went away to the city of Ramah. [j]