Daily Reflections From Higher Things®

Daily Lectionary: 1 Samuel 14:47-15:9; Acts 24:1-23 "Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them…" (1 Samuel 15:3) In the Name + of Jesus. Amen. Today's reading (1 Samuel 15) is a hard text. Samuel commands King Saul to destroy the Amalekites, to kill "both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." There are other places, too, in which God commands the Israelites to do the same to the Canaanites. How are we to make sense of this? Atheists and critics wonder about these things, too, and use these passages as attacks, claiming the God of the Bible commanded genocide or ethnic cleansing. It's easy to just turn the page when you read something like this, and I think a lot of people do. But while we cannot possibly comprehend the mind of God, there are some things that can help us think this through. These commands are limited to a specific time and place. They are not open-ended directions to destroy people of certain tribes or races. In fac