And Saul smote Amalek from Havilah as thou comest to Shur, which is opposite to Egypt.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
And he took Agag the king of Amalek alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.
Saul wins the battle and destroys the Amalekite army. But one man walks out alive: the enemy king. The rest of the chapter turns on that one exception.
Saul's campaign was successful by any military measure. Commentators are careful about where the fault actually lies:
Saul lost his kingdom, and the Lord rejected him. It was not because of a mistaken policy in sparing Agag and the best of the spoil from destruction, but for disobedience to an express command.
Nothing suggests Saul ran out of strength or met stiff resistance.
So it was not for any lack of power on his part, nor any sudden strength in the enemy. Agag, the king of Amalek, was taken captive, and the sheep and oxen clearly put up no resistance to Israel's victorious sword. So sparing the best of the cattle and bringing Agag back alive did not suggest a partial victory. It showed a deliberate purpose, driven by special desire.
Why he wanted Agag alive is not stated. One suggestion is that Saul meant to display him:
Why he spared Agag is not clear. He may have intended to bring him in chains in the triumphal procession he appears to have made through the land on his return from the expedition, to display his prowess and success in the undertaking.
Of everything in Amalek, Agag was the last thing to keep. His name carries its own meaning:
Of course Agag the king was the worst of all Amalek, the figurehead of all its opposition to God. His name means, "I will overtop." It stands for the pride of being who I am. That pride is at the base of all the evil of the lusts of the flesh. If this root is not judged, but merely some of the details of lustful things, then the evil is not rightly judged at all.
"Agag" was probably a title as well as a personal name. One reference work notes that it "was the common title of the kings of the Amalekites, as Pharaoh was that of the Egyptians" (Morrish Bible Dictionary).
Commentators read Amalek as a picture of the sinful nature in us:
Amalek is a type of the flesh, and with flesh God can make no terms. In it dwells no good thing (Rom. 7:18). God condemned the sin that is part of it in the sacrifice of Christ (Rom. 8:3). And Christians are viewed as having, for themselves, "crucified the flesh with its passions and desires" (Gal. 5:24). That means they have accepted the sentence of God against the evil thing.
Saul kept what looked good and destroyed what looked worthless. That instinct is easy to copy:
He thought there was a best side and a worst side to weigh, just as you do. He would not defend the worst, but he pleaded for the best and spared it. Do you think Satan has a best side in the eyes of God? The flesh came from Satan, not from God.
Another writer points to who should have drawn that line:
He was ready to carry out the will of God about all that was "vile and refuse." But he thought he might make some exceptions. He acted as if he should draw the line between "refuse" and "good" by his own judgement, and not leave it to the unerring judgement of Him who saw what Amalek truly was.
The man Saul left alive did not stay alive long — but the sparing outlived Saul.
Samuel was a very different man from Saul. When they brought Agag the king of Amalek before him, he cut him to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal. Agag might come "cheerfully," but Samuel saw his true character: an enemy of God's people, under God's judgment. It is a solemn thought. When God carried out His judgment on Saul, the king who had spared Agag died at the hand of an Amalekite.
Generations later the same line appears again. In Persia, the man who tried to wipe out the Jews was Haman the Agagite, whom King Ahasuerus promoted above all the princes (Leslie M. Grant).
- Sentence — Amalek attacked Israel when they were faint and weary. God's judgment on that nation was righteous, and Israel was appointed to carry it out.
- Spared — Saul destroyed the people but kept the king alive. He had the power to finish and chose not to.
- Root — Agag's name means "I will overtop." Cut the details and leave the root, and the evil stands unjudged.
- Best — Saul kept what looked good to him. He drew the line by his own judgement, not God's.
- Cost — Samuel finished what Saul left, Saul fell at an Amalekite's hand, and Agag's line rose again in Haman.
And Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep and oxen, and beasts of the second bearing, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not devote them to destruction; but everything that was mean and weak, that they destroyed utterly.
God commanded Saul to destroy Amalek completely. Verse 9 records what Saul did instead. He wiped out the worthless and kept the valuable. So the real question is not whether Saul won the battle. It is who decided where the line between "destroy" and "spare" should fall.
Saul had every advantage. He gathered the army, and God handed Amalek over. Then the verse turns.
Amalek is the great foe of God's people and pictures the flesh and its lusts. Israel was to fight Amalek from generation to generation and to blot out every memory of Amalek. In the same way the flesh is always the enemy of the children of God. "For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh." It is enmity against God. This was the enemy Saul was to fight and destroy completely. But Saul at heart was nothing but an Amalekite... Then comes the significant "but."
Nothing in the story suggests Saul ran out of strength. Sheep and oxen do not fight back.
Israel took Agag, the king of Amalek, captive, and the sheep and oxen put up no resistance to Israel's victorious sword. So sparing the best of the cattle and bringing Agag back alive did not point to a partial victory. It pointed to a deliberate purpose driven by a special desire. This is worth noticing. Faith often fails to count on God for complete victory over the lusts of the flesh. That deserves strong blame. But deliberately choosing to spare those lusts is a very different thing.
Saul kept the command where he agreed with it. He moved the boundary himself.
God had told Saul to destroy Amalek, but his heart wanted to spare something that seemed good and desirable to him, at least. He was ready to carry out the will of God about everything that was "despised and worthless." But he thought he could make some exceptions. He acted as if his own judgement should draw the line between what was "worthless" and what was "good" — not the unerring judgement of Him who looked at Amalek from a true point of view. God saw in Agag a man who, for all his refinement, would resist Israel as strongly as ever. That was His ground of controversy with Amalek, and Saul could not understand or value it.
Agag was not an incidental survivor. He was the head of the thing God had condemned.
Of course Agag the king was the worst of all Amalek, the figurehead of all its opposition to God. His name means "I will overtop." That is the pride of being who I am. This pride lies at the base of all the evil of the lusts of the flesh. If we leave this root unjudged and deal only with some of the details of lustful things, we have not judged the evil rightly at all. The best of the animals speaks of the more refined lusts. They are not obviously bad. They can put on a nice appearance that deceives people into thinking they are not so bad.
Saul's pattern is easy to repeat. People condemn the coarse forms of evil and keep the presentable ones — even offering them to God.
How often people denounce and reject the grosser forms of fleshly evil without mercy, while they still keep up a fair show in the flesh! But how can what is unclean be dedicated to Him? There is only one dedication of evil to God, and that is dedication to the sword of judgment. So the sin of Saul and the people was a plain refusal to obey the command of the Lord. Saul seems to have been both their agent and their partner in the act. He had put his own interpretation on that command, and that interpretation suited his own desires and the people's.
The verse names Saul first. When Samuel confronted him, Saul named only the people.
Samuel asked him what the bleating of the sheep and the lowing of the oxen meant. He replied that the people had spared the best of them to sacrifice to the Lord. In 1 Samuel 15:9 the writer of the book says "Saul and the people spared," and so on. Like Adam in Eden, rather than confess his own sin, he put the blame somewhere else.
Commentators are careful about the reason Saul lost the throne.
Saul lost his kingdom, and the Lord rejected him. This was not because sparing Agag and the best of the spoil from destruction was a mistaken policy. It was for disobedience to an express command.
- Command. God said destroy all; Saul destroyed only what he did not want. The "but" of verse 9 is the whole story.
- Choice. No enemy resisted him. Sparing Agag and the flocks was a deliberate purpose, not a failed effort.
- Line. Saul kept the command where he agreed with it. He drew the line between "good" and "worthless" by his own judgement, not God's.
- Root. Agag's name means "I will overtop." He was the head of the evil. Judging details while sparing the root is not judging the evil at all.
- Cost. Saul lost the throne for disobedience to a plain command, not for bad policy. Then he blamed the people he had led.