Need Assistance with 1 Samuel 15:3

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worldcitizen

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Hi everyone,

I believe in the Bible so I defend it wherever I go. Although I am not a member of any Christian church, I believe the Bible is the Word of God.

I get asked a lot about 1 Samuel 15:3 and such similar passages in the OT.

I know the Amalekites had caused trouble for the Israelites for well over 500 years and their coming out of Egypt and God’s pledge to destroy them in time.

I try to compare them to modern day Isis where they would have had to be stopped or the Israelites would have been destroyed.

I’m sure others can help throw light on how to explain this best and also how to reconcile a loving God with what people say is a cruel God. I agree justice is one of God’s attributes so it’s not all just love. God sometimes must exercise His Justice.

Much more information on the Amalekites would help greatly but most Biblical commentaries I’ve read give very little information about them. Is there more I can find out about their corrupt practices such as child sacrifice and prostitution etc?

I’m eager to learn from all of you. Any links to ebooks I can buy on Amazon would assist as well as recommendations of literature to study that I can get access to without too much expense.

I don’t believe God is cruel but just, however, things need explaining to many who question passages in the OT like these and so I need to equip myself as best I can to ensure I can explain better.

Different perspectives and views from others like yourselves I’m sure will be very helpful. Thank you for your assistance in advance.
 
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If God had innocent people and Babies killed for the greater good of the world, he repaid them many times over in Heaven.
 
Ancient war texts often say things like “destroy completely” and the like when it’d actually be like “defeat”.
We can be sure God is just in His dealings with war. https://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/just_war.htm

God is kind and merciful. It is better to pay for their sins now than in the hereafter.
 
Yes I agree. We all must die. I’ve read somewhere that although the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was cruel and involved the death of innocent women and children it stopped the war and in reality saved a lot more innocents. I liked this answer.
 
I believe God is just. I wonder if the word Amalek were replaced with Nazism or Isis whether people would realise just how just God was.
 
worldcitizen said:
Yes I agree. We all must die. I’ve read somewhere that although the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was cruel and involved the death of innocent women and children it stopped the war and in reality saved a lot more innocents. I liked this answer.
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Yes, God knows this life of pain and suffering is only temporary, and you will too when you are in Heaven. 🙂
 
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I think something to keep in mind is the testament you are in when reading the bible. I am not trying to say that there is a different god, God is and always will be the same. However, the way that God interacted with the people of the OT is different from now. Let me explain.

God shows Himself to us now as merciful and loving. We understand this and relate to God in this way. In the OT, God spoke and revealed Himself to the people in a language they understood. Remember they were “eye for an eye” type of people. So, God showed them his love and justice and taught them the law in their language. Then Jesus came in NT and spoke "love your neighbor’ and “turn the other cheek”.

I may not have explained that good, but its interesting to think about when looking at those “destruction” passages in the OT.
 
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Catholics dont orphan a passage or a text in the Bible.
We look at the passages next to it, the chapter and book it is found in, and then the context of the entire Bible.

The first question to ask is how is God seaking to us here, how is God speaking of His great love for us.
We believe the Old Testament to be divinely inspired. The Old Testament is a collection of books that prepared the people then, and us now, for the Incarnation. The birth of Christ, and His ministry on earth.

We cannot compare the Old Testament with War , atrocities, acts of War, terrorism.
We must look at the intention of God to prepare His people for the Coming of their Messiah.

It is a great blessing to read of the relationship God is building with His people in the Old Testament, and the insight God allows us into Him.
 
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What about accusations of God being cruel because of ordering the slaughter of babies and women? It’s a dilemma to address this topic and although as believers we trust God is just, to others it’s very difficult to deal with.

We know Moses wrote the first five books.

But it does make sense that if the Israelites were wiped out then where would Jesus be?
 
God had a need in His salvation plan to usurp the Amalekites land, and to do so called for their utter destruction. For us modern people, extermination sounds harsh, but because of God’s need this extermination was actually a consecration of the Amalekites, to God, ensuring their salvation.
 
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Here’s the problem that people have… today millions upon millions of children are murdered in their mothers’ wombs–yet society say that there’s nothing wrong with that; it has made laws and claims that makes it not only possible but a right to kill as though a woman was merely disinfecting her body or ridding herself of some yeast infection or what have you.

There’s no outcry for such murderous practices.

In the last few hundred years states have murder over 200,000, 000 (two hundred million) of its citizens under one “cleansing” or another… non of the “bleeding hearts” that seek the death penalty for God for “killing those people in during the Old Testament” have even a slight concern for the evils of these near-history accounts.

The US, other world governments and private industry has used and abused (and are still doing so) humanity and none speak against these evils…

I am not using the tit for tat argument; I am simply putting things into perspective.

Now, Yahweh God may have commanded that the temporal life of those people be terminated, but did you know that He had the Power to protect their spiritual lives? Not only that but He made sure that it was part of His Salvific Plan:
18For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. 19After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits- 20to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, (1 St. Peter 3)
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God’s Way is not our ways; God’s Justice is not our justice.

Maran atha!

Angel
 
If the Bible were to have been sanitized of anything “bad” or seemingly wrong (by our human standards) these same people would be protesting that the Bible was so sanitized because “God” was hiding the truth about His Motives/Intentions.

Jesus stated it better: ‘they would not believe even if a man (Jesus) rose from the dead.’ (paraphrased)

Maran atha!

Angel
 
How very true. It seems that man always wants to find a pretext for condemning God but when man does something like abortion or war he thinks nothing of it!
 
God decides when each and every person dies. He gives us life and He takes it away. So when God decides that someone dies, it is not murder. For He judges souls and gives eternal life to the innocent.

The peoples destroyed by the Israelites, by order of God, were very sinful. And so God ordained that they would be treated this way. But the innocent among them could also be killed, only because it was the order of God.
 
In 1 Samuel 15:3 how does God communicate this command? Through a vision or dream?
 
This is the true conundrum; we hear about all the people who are dying because of the consumption of the opioids and other drugs and those who contract and infect others with the various stds… yet, we continue to celebrate such misuse of the human body and the planet’s resources… we continue to find ways to write into songs and to put into movie and program scripts the unfettered use, abuse and celebration of drugs (alcohol and cigarettes included) and the loose morals of ‘try-sex’ (do whatever with whom/what ever)–when they hit the wall (or bottom) they simply turn to the government or medicine in an attempt to blame-away their responsibility and the consequences of their “choices.”

Since Scriptures forbid such practices at least they have enough sense not to seek to blame God for what they have determined to do… so I suspect they seek out other venues to play the blame game naming God the number one culprit.

Maran atha!

Angel
 
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This is not necessarily clear; but we know that Yahweh did Reveal Himself through both direct communication and through dreams. In the previous chapter we find Israel sinning against Yahweh God’s command and Saul asking the Lord for guidance and He ignoring the request–it is only indirectly, through the prophet Samuel, that God then communicates with Saul.

Maran atha!

Angel
 
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