I was reading the account of the prophet Samuel who “hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord.” ( 1 Samuel 15:33).  God ordered King Saul to go to war against the Amalekites.  God had proclaimed judgment against the Amalekites because the Amalekites preyed upon Israel when they were crossing the desert.  Amalek laid in wait for Israel, waiting for those who were lagging behind: the weak, the handicapped, the very old and the very young and the ones who were with young and he mercilessly killed them.  God hates meanness so God sent King Saul to executed God’s judgment.

King Saul was ordered by God to “utterly destroy” Amalek, all that he had and all who descended from him.  King Saul was not to spare anyone or anything, even the animals.  King Saul was to kill them all.

I am speechless at this command because I know how completely barbaric this would seem to modern sensibilities.  This is genocide and it is condemned by the United Nations. The rules that apply to man do not apply to God:  when man commits genocide, he does so out of cruelty, revenge and a lust for power.  When God orders genocide, it is divine judgment from the mind of an all-knowing and just God who by no means clears the guilty.

King Saul must have had modern sensibilities:  maybe his stomach was just not sturdy enough to commit genocide; maybe he though genocide was just wrong and impractical; maybe he thought genocide was pointless because he can turn an enemy in to an ally; maybe he didn’t destroy all because he wanted to expand his hegemony and Agag can be his vassal; maybe he just wanted to claim Agag as his spoil of war, and his property as his booty for his men and for his treasury.

Whatever King Saul’s reasons were, he disobeyed God’s explicit command.  He spared Agag, the best of his livestock and all that he thought was “good.”  He did not remember that Agag’s property had all been declared by God as “vile” for they were obtained from his murder victims.  Thus, God did not want man to profit from the fruits of sin.  But King Saul exercised his own discretion and his own judgment, he replaced God’s judgment with his. God saw this as disobedience and self-will.

When Samuel came, Saul stoutly declared that he had “obeyed the voice of the Lord:” he had gone the way which the Lord had sent him, he had brought Agag the king of the Amalek and he had utterly destroyed the Amalekites.”  But Samuel was not convinced for he heard the bleating of the sheep of Amalek that Saul had spared for a thanksgiving sacrifice for God.

Samuel said that God had no great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as he has in obedience.  Samuel declared that as far as God is concerned: “To obey is better than sacrifice.”  And with that, Samuel took Agag and cut him up with a sword in front of the troops of Israel.

Again, I am speechless: killing a man is shocking enough, chopping a man to pieces in front of a crowd is staggering, cutting-up a prisoner of war is just unacceptable, it is atrocious by modern standards.  Under the Geneva Conventions of Warfare, here are rules of war, rules of engagement: prisoners of war cannot be executed.  Samuel did not just execute Agag, he utterly destroyed Agag.

It would seem here that God is so cruel as to allow his prophet to commit this “war crime.”  Again, the rules of man do not apply to God.  Since God created Agag, he has the right to take his life.  God is the Supreme Ruler of all creation and he has the right to say who lives and who dies and how. God is good and gracious, he is merciful and forgiving but he does not spare the unrepentant.  God is kind and loving but he acts with justice, giving all men what their acts deserve.  This is why the wages of sin is death.  This is why all men are under the sentence of death.  Sin always has a price, sin always has a penalty.

But more importantly, God is all-knowing.  God wanted Amalek destroyed because God was protecting the future of Israel: history informs us that Saul did not utterly destroy Amalek.  David had to fight the Amalekites while he was in hiding from Saul.  The Amalekites invaded the city of Ziklag where David’s family lived and they utterly destroyed Ziklag.  David’s family narrowly escaped and David had to rescue his family. David slaughtered the Amalekites. David made war against Amalek, he could have lost his life in the battle and so the Davidic royal line would have ended even before David had ascended the throne.  Jesus Christ is a descendant of David:  his biological mother Mary was a descendant of David from Nathan the son of David; Joseph, the adoptive father of Jesus Christ was also of the line of David, he was a descendant of  David from the line of Solomon.

Centuries later, when Israel was in exile in Babylon and Babylon had fallen to the Medo-Persians, a descendant of Agag threatened to exterminate all the Jews:  he did so by legal decree.  This descendant of Agag was named Haman.  He was the most favored man in the court of King Ahasuerus. I cannot help but think that had Saul obeyed God, there would be no Haman to try to exterminate the whole Jewish race of whom Christ was to be born.  But God knew.  God knew the consequences of Saul’s disobedience, and he had prepared Esther and Mordecai to deal with Haman.  Remember that Haman was hanged in the same gallows he had prepared for Mordecai.  Haman and all his sons were hanged.

God is truly inscrutable.  His ways are past finding out. God deals with the details as he also takes care of the big picture.  We cannot grasp that. His ways are not our ways neither are His ways our ways. And the things that are highly esteemed among men are an abomination in the sight of God.  Man was made in the image of God and yet God is so different from us. He is infinite and we are finite. How can we ever think to make God accountable to our human laws?

I have heard many people say that they do not believe that the Bible is the Word of God: they cannot believe that the God that is portrayed in the Bible is the true God because the God in the Bible is so bloodthirsty and so cruel.

It cannot be gainsaid that our God is terrible.  He is a fearsome God.  Our God is full of wrath against sin.  It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Most people cannot comprehend how such a terrible God can be loving and good at the same time: but the Bible says that God has both goodness and severity.  God is good, he is perfect in his goodness, but the goodness of God leads him to judge those who spurn his goodness for God is also just.

I cannot explain God to the satisfaction of everyone.  I can just take what He has revealed about Himself and trust that He is who he says he is. I can trust that God is covenant-making God.  It is those who refuse to enter into a covenant with him that will receive his severest judgment.

Because I have entered into a covenant with God, I can trust that God will deal kindly with me as he has dealt kindly with all those with whom God has covenanted.  When people treat me unjustly, I can trust that God will someday give me justice that people have denied me.  When I act unjustly toward others, I can be sure that God will mete out justice to me.  But then, I can also expect that God’s justice will always be tempered with mercy, that God, no matter how painful his judgments are, still does not deal with me after all my sins:  his punishments are always loving and their purpose is not to destroy me but to correct and to mold me.

God is merciful, loving and kind which is why he ought to be feared.  He is just and righteous and holy which is why he ought to be loved and worshiped.