Bless Israel

“Obedience is better than sacrifice.” 

1 Samuel 15:16-23

What happened in this passage is very disturbing. The Lord was very displeased with Saul for his disobedience. God’s instructions to Saul were very clear. “Go and put the sinful Amalekites under a ban of destruction. Fight against them until you have exterminated them.” What’s more, “Go and attack the Amalekites and completely destroy everything they have. Do not spare them. Kill men and women, infants and nursing babies, oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys.” (1 Sam. 15:3) 

Why did God want the Amalekites destroyed? It’s highly distressing to find out God even wanted the nursing babies killed! I would think no matter how evil a nation is, it’s best to give them a chance to repent, isn’t it? Just like the Ninevites who put ashes on their heads after Jonah prophesied to them. 

The Amalekites first attacked Israel unprovoked from behind when the Jews had crossed the Red Sea. “Amalek is Israel’s persistent enemy. The Amalekites provide an explanation for the irrational and intense hatred for Jews that echoes through human history. In Jewish history the Amalekites—a tribe with genocidal intentions against God’s people—came to symbolize all those who sought to eradicate the Jewish people, from Titus to Hadrian, Khmelnitsky to Hitler.” (Melissa Florer-Bixler)

Israel has many enemies today. They all want to eradicate the Jews. I have to say it even if it is controversial, but none of them are more blatant than Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. They burned not only houses but people, families huddling together. They not only raped, they tortured and mutilated while they raped. They did not discriminate. They not only killed but took hostage babies, the elderly, the young. They cooked a baby in an oven! How many people did they burn, that even up to now, the archaeologists are trying to discover the identities of? “When we tried picking up the bones, the bones turned to ash.” 

If we read the Hamas charter we will find out that the main goal of Hamas is to obliterate Israel. That they will “jihad” until Israel is destroyed. They will never accept having their own state, and they have repeatedly refused to have a state when it was offered to them, as clearly laid out in their Charter. What would we have Israel do after the horror of Oct. 7? After they heard from Hamas that they will repeat Oct 7 again and again? 

I am not a fan of political correctness, of people who say they have their truth and I have mine. I only want God’s truth because God is truth. Who am I to question God, after all? 

If God says, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you,” (Genesis 12:3) then I will constantly pray for and bless Israel. God sees hearts. He sees the future, and He knows who will repent, like the Ninevites in Jonah chapters 3 and 4. If God wanted the Amalekites destroyed, then perhaps He saw there was no hope for them just like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:20-19:28).

As for those who curse Israel, like the Hamas, I believe in hell on earth. People who hate, who commit abominations, who are devoted to destroying a people just because they have their own very distorted version of the truth, are already living in hell.