At the end of all the precepts of humanity, the extermination of that people which is presented to us as the incarnation of inhumanity is decreed.
(18) He . . . smote the hindmost . . .--These details are not given in Exodus 17. Amalek's attack follows the appearance of the stream of water from Horeb. There was nothing more natural than that the faint and weary should stay behind at the water side. There the Amalekites appear to have found them and cruelly massacred them.
(19) Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek.--This decree was entrusted to Joshua in the first instance, as the "servant of the Book" (Exodus 17:14); here it is enjoined upon the nation of Israel. It was carried out in several stages: by Barak and Gideon (Judges 5:14; Judges 6:3; Judges 7:12, &c.), by Saul and Samuel (1 Samuel 15), by David (1 Samuel 27:8-9; 1 Samuel 30:17), by the Simeonites (1 Chronicles 4:42-43), and lastly by Esther, who exterminated the Agagites in Haman's house. No doubt any remnant of Amalek in the Persian empire under Mordecai would have shared Haman's fate.
Verses 17-19. - Whilst in their intercourse with each other the law of love and brotherly kindness was to predominate, it was to be otherwise in regard to the enemies of God and his people. Them they were to overcome by force; wickedness was to be removed by the extinction of the wicked. Moses has already repeatedly reminded the Israelites that they had utterly to destroy the wicked nations of Canaan; and he here closes this discourse by reminding them that there was a nation outside of Canaan which was also doomed, and which they were to root out. This was Amalek, which had attacked the Israelites in their journey at Rephidim, and had taken advantage of their exhausted condition to harass their rear and destroy those who, faint and weary, had lagged behind. For this they had been already punished by the Israelites, who, led on by Joshua, had turned upon them and discomfited them with the edge of the sword. This, however, was not enough; Amalek was to be utterly destroyed, and this the Israelites were to effect as soon as the Lord had given them rest in the Promised Land. It was not, however, till the time of David that this was done.
25:17-19 Let every persecutor and injurer of God's people take warning from the case of the Amalekites. The longer it is before judgement comes, the more dreadful will it be at last. Amalek may remind us of the foes of our souls. May we be enabled to slay all our lusts, all the corruptions both within and without, all the powers of darkness and of the world, which oppose our way to the blessed Saviour.
Remember what Amalek did unto thee,.... The Amalekites, how they came out against them, and fought with them at Rephidim, Exodus 17:8,
by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt; which was an aggravation of their cruel and inhuman action, that they not only came out against them unprovoked, were the aggressors, and fell upon them as they were travelling on the road, but when they were just come out of Egypt, where they had been in hard bondage, and their spirits broken, and they not used to war; and so took them at all these disadvantages, a people that had not in the least injured them.
At the end of all the precepts of humanity, the extermination of that people which is presented to us as the incarnation of inhumanity is decreed.
(18) He . . . smote the hindmost . . .--These details are not given in Exodus 17. Amalek's attack follows the appearance of the stream of water from Horeb. There was nothing more natural than that the faint and weary should stay behind at the water side. There the Amalekites appear to have found them and cruelly massacred them.
(19) Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek.--This decree was entrusted to Joshua in the first instance, as the "servant of the Book" (Exodus 17:14); here it is enjoined upon the nation of Israel. It was carried out in several stages: by Barak and Gideon (Judges 5:14; Judges 6:3; Judges 7:12, &c.), by Saul and Samuel (1 Samuel 15), by David (1 Samuel 27:8-9; 1 Samuel 30:17), by the Simeonites (1 Chronicles 4:42-43), and lastly by Esther, who exterminated the Agagites in Haman's house. No doubt any remnant of Amalek in the Persian empire under Mordecai would have shared Haman's fate.
by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt; which was an aggravation of their cruel and inhuman action, that they not only came out against them unprovoked, were the aggressors, and fell upon them as they were travelling on the road, but when they were just come out of Egypt, where they had been in hard bondage, and their spirits broken, and they not used to war; and so took them at all these disadvantages, a people that had not in the least injured them.