Why did God command the destruction of the Amalekites? 1 Samuel 15

The passages

Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt.

1 Samuel 15:2

Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

1 Samuel 15:3

But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and of the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them.

1 Samuel 15:9

The problem

The command is explicit: women, infants and animals are included. The reason given is something Amalek did generations earlier (Exodus 17). Saul's failure to kill everyone is treated as disobedience that costs him the throne. A reader may ask how this fits with the God of Exodus 34:6, "merciful and gracious", or with a Jesus who tells his followers to love enemies.

What believers and scholars say

Hyperbole in ancient war reports. Younger and Copan show that Near Eastern victory accounts regularly claim total annihilation and then continue to describe the same people as present. In 1 Samuel 27:8 David raids the Amalekites, and in chapter 30 they are alive and raiding Israel. On this reading the "all" is rhetoric for a decisive victory.

Judgment on a violent people. The traditional answer is that Amalek was long established as an enemy, attacked the weak at the rear of the Israelite column (Deuteronomy 25:18), and that God as judge may order what individuals may not. Many find this hard to accept when children are named.

A text that troubles itself. Seibert and others argue that Christians should not defend the command but should recognize it as an ancient writer's understanding of God, which Jesus later corrects. Some also see a moral struggle within the Old Testament, in which a later tradition (as in Jonah) argues for mercy toward enemies.

Jewish reading. In rabbinic tradition Amalek came to stand for a recurring evil, and the sages debated whether the commandment could still be carried out at all.

Where this leaves it

The text records the command and does not soften it. Everyone who reads it seriously ends up in one of three places: it is exaggerated, it was God's will for that time, or it reflects a human view of God that the Bible itself later questions. Each has defenders among believers, and each comes with a cost.