The Bible Story Every Person Needs To Know

In his best-selling book, "The Moral Compass," former Secretary of Education under the Reagan administration and self-anointed morality guru, William J. Bennett, shares with his readers a story we find in the Old Testament book of 1st Samuel, chapter 3.
The story takes place in the days of Samuel’s youth, and it tells how Samuel was awakened one night by a voice calling his name. Samuel doesn’t recognize the voice at first; however, after a few more of these callings, he learns that the voice belongs to the Lord. The conversation that follows is significant because it marks the beginning of a life-long dialog between God and Samuel that would eventually lead to Samuel’s becoming one of Israel’s most famous prophets.

Something else that makes this story noteworthy is the fact that no one actually gets killed in it!

As I read the selection, though, I couldn’t help but think to myself that were a person to
venture just a few pages further in the Old Testament that he would come across another story involving the prophet Samuel, only in this story lot’s of people get killed. In fact, it’s the kind of story ought to send Mr. Bennett’s moral compass spinning like a top ... or at least I hope it would. The story to which I refer is found in 1st Samuel chapter 15 and takes place in the days of Saul, Israel’s first king.

In this story God has once again spoken to Samuel, only this time God tells him to instruct King Saul to exterminate a group of people known as the Amalekites. Beginning with verse 3 we read:

"Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants ..." 1st Samuel 15:3, NIV

Anxious to please God and Samuel, Saul assembled an army of 210,000 men and set about the grizzly task of doing God’s bidding. Unfortunately, God’s bidding very often involves the murder of children. That was most certainly the case here. For clearly, if we accept the Bible as a true book - as Mr. Bennett no doubt does - then we must also be willing to accept that God has just ordered his people to murder a bunch of babies! "Children and infants" to use the Bible’s exact words.

The Bible doesn’t tell us exactly how many people died in this particular attack, but I would imagine the number would be quite staggering in light of the fact that Saul felt the need to assemble an army of nearly a quarter of a million to accomplish the task. The casualties no doubt numbered in the hundreds of thousands. After all, how many women and children do you think one well-armed soldier can kill ... especially when he has god on his side?

As you read through this story, you might find yourself wondering what on earth these Amalekites had done to deserve such a pounding. The answer to this question is found in 1st Samuel 15:2 and Exodus 17: 8-16. It seems that about 400 years earlier, the Amalekites’ distant ancestors had attacked the Israelites during their 40 years of wandering through the desert with Moses. This attack so infuriated God that he vowed to one day wipe the Amalekites completely off the face of the earth. God finally makes good on this promise in 1st Samuel 15.

I don’t know about you but I have a real problem with this. The Amalekites who originally attacked Moses and the Israelites had been dead for hundreds of years. If the Lord was so bent on punishing those guilty of attacking Israel in the desert, then why didn’t he do just that? If God had the power to part the Red Sea, to turn a man’s wife into a pillar of salt, to make a donkey talk, and to destroy every living thing on the planet with a flood -- then neutralizing a band of desert hoodlums ought to be a piece of cake. Right?

In other words, why didn’t God simply take out his wrath against those individuals responsible for the attack in the first place? My moral compass tells me that it is patently immoral to murder thousands of "children and infants" whose only crime was that of being the distant relatives of some group of people who had attacked another group of people hundreds of years earlier.

Wouldn’t that be a bit like the United States - in the 1990's - dropping a bunch of atom bombs on Great Britain because the British - in the 1770's - had attacked the American colonies? I don't know about you, but my moral compass points the same direction in both cases.

Perhaps Mr. Bennett would be so kind as to comment on this Old Testament story in his next best-selling book.

Copyright (c) 1997 Michael Scott Earl

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