Hacking Agag to Pieces

Then Samuel said, "Bring Agag king of the Amalekites here to me." So Agag came to him

cautiously. And Agag said, "Surely the bitterness of death is past.” But Samuel said, "As your

sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women." And Samuel

hacked Agag in pieces before the LORD in Gilgal.

1 Samuel 15:32-33

Saul was called upon by God to go and kill the Amalekites completely in 1 Samuel 15:2-3. Hear the words

given to Saul: Thus says the LORD of hosts: “I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he

ambushed him on the way when he came up from Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy

all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and

sheep, camel and donkey.” I know these verses may seem incredibly harsh, and there’s plenty of people

out there who have condemned such passages for perceiving evil on God’s part. You and I have to

remember though that God, who made everyone and everything, has the absolute right to not only create

but also to destroy, and to even ask His people as He does in the Old Testament to destroy out of

obedience. When people balk at the violence of the Old Testament, they are forgetting the authority that

God has. The key principle of this whole ordeal of 1 Samuel 15 is total obedience.

Saul did not think it was agreeable to obey to the level God called for it. Verse 9 tells us how it went down:

But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs, and all

that was good, and were unwilling to utterly destroy them. But everything despised and worthless, that

they utterly destroyed. A key word in this verse is “unwilling.” Saul was willing to obey until it was no

longer desirable to do so. Should we call that obedience or disobedience when he did do some of what

he was asked, just not all of it? The Bible makes it clear in this passage that it was a tremendous failure,

perhaps a test, that resulted in Saul’s removal as king before God.

The character Samuel is so interesting in his role in this passage. Samuel was raised to be a prophet by

Eli, whose two sons served in gross ways and were judged by God. Samuel grew up seeing this, and his

own mentor died by falling backwards and breaking his neck after hearing that his sons were killed.

Samuel had a hard-up loyalty to following God, so when the news was conveyed to Saul that he was to

destroy the Amalekites down to the women and children, even the livestock, he knew that it had to be

done. Not only did he call Saul out for sin in this passage, declaring the kingdom to be removed from

Saul, but the end of this chapter shows us that he did what Saul would not. In one of the more graphic

and violent displays in the Bible, something we would not want to watch, Samuel grabbed a sword and

walked up to Agag, king of the Amalekites, and hacked him to pieces. Saul and many others watched in

gory detail the obedience they refused to do being done by the prophet. From what can be seen in the

Bible, this was Samuel’s first and last killing of another human. What a statement that must have been, an

image they would never have erased from their memories.

God is not calling us to go and do something like this today. He is calling us to love others, to share the

Gospel, to live for Him and to worship Him with our lives. Romans 12:1 tells us that we are called to give

our lives as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable unto God, which is our reasonable service. Agag and

the Amalekites are representative in many ways of sin in this passage; by allowing some of the sin to

remain, Saul jeopardized the whole nation. By refusing to obey God fully, Saul chose the end of his reign.

Saul didn’t see it that way, verse 20 telling us that Saul argued that he did obey the Lord. It’s a graphic

passage, but what we’re seeing here is the aggressive extent God is calling for us to live with in

relationship to obedience before Him. Like Samuel, we need to take His word and our call seriously. We

need to take time and opportunities seriously. Samuel was brave in that he called out a sinful king and

chopped another sinful king to pieces. Nobody does that without having an extremely high view of God.

Our view of God needs to get amplified big time if we’re going to live for Him. Only one life will soon be

past, only what’s done for Christ will last.

Where do you need to practice some radical obedience in your life today? Be brave.

Sam Stringer

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by

permission. All rights reserved.