GOD’S WAR: Israel vs Amalek. Israel vs. Hamas. The nation of Israel and the nation Amalek are fighting an eternal battle. The battle is a euphemism for the war between Good and evil. And today we are witnessing this modern incarnation as the fight between Israel and the islamic fundamentalist terror group Hamas.
As King Solomon wisely wrote, “there is nothing new under the sun,” and we can see many parallels that show an undeniable connection between the Amalek Nation and the terrorist regime Hamas.
The first interaction with the Amalek people that we see in the biblical text, already gives us a deep insight into who they are and what they want to accomplish. It comes right after the story of the Exodus from Egypt, when the Israelites were enslaved by the Egyptians and after hearing their cries, God instructs Moses to free the Israelites and lead them back to their land. However, the Pharaoh doesn’t want to let them go, so God creates numerous plagues and open miracles to release them, culminating with the splitting of the sea and the death of the Egyptian army.
Now when all of these miracles events happened, people all over the region witnessed it for themselves, and people became aware of the God of the Israelites. The biblical text says that the nations had become frightened and in awe of this God (Ex 15:14-16). Yet who wasn’t impressed by God and what He had done, the Amalek. It says in Deuteronomy 25, that right after the Israelites had crossed through the miraculous splitting of the sea, the Amalek staged a surprise attack targeting the weak and innocent stragglers who were marching in the back (Deuteronomy 25:17-19).
Let’s pause for a second. Can you see the parallel? With the surprise attack that Hamas did on October 7, 2023, killing innocent women, children, elderly sleeping in their homes? The young people peacefully dancing at a concert?
The biblical commentaries gives an even deeper insight to what the Amalek truly meant to accomplish. After the local nations had heard about the miracles that the Israelite God had done, perhaps at that moment, all the pagan idol worshipers would have converted to the monotheistic God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But the Amalek wanted to cool off the faith and excitement, and instill doubt that the God of the Israelites was truly all powerful. They want people to think that the world is just chaos and random order. So they attacked the weak and innocent, so that people would question and have doubt in the Israelite God.
Because it all boils down to this. The purpose of the Israelite nation is raise the banner of the kingdom of God, to help repair the world, to teach the Bible, the Torah, to bring into the world more compassion, justice, morality. While the Amalek wants to show the exact opposite. They show no interest in God nor in improving of the world. They are masters of crime and violence, they want to instill fear, to challenge people’s faith and disconnect people from God and from each other.
But let’s continue. Because there’s another deep spiritual insight that I want to share with you.
So right before the following encounter with the Amalek Nation, in Chapter 17 of the Book of Exodus, the Israelites are wandering in the desert, there’s no water anywhere and they are worried that they are going to die of thirst. And they complain to Moses and all of sudden they begin to panic, and doubt sets in, and they are worried, did God abandon us? Eventually God miraculously provides water, but perhaps it’s not a coincidence that after this episode of crises of faith, the Amalek strike. Because the evil forces wants to take advantage of someone when they are at their lowest, to disrupt their faith, to cause one to doubt and to forget that God exists. It is no coincidence that the gematria, the numerical value of the Hebrew letters, that spell Amalek (240) is equivalent to that of the letters that spell safek, “doubt.”
Immediately after this water crises, the biblical text sites first major battle between the Israelites and Amalekites. Moses sends his right-hand-man, Joshua, to lead the battle, while Moses goes on top of the mountain to watch over them. And the text says something very interesting, that whenever Moses hands are raised up, like in raising his hands up in prayer, the Israelites are winning the battle. And when Moses puts his hands down, they start to lose the battle. So the war rages on and Moses already an old man, can’t keep his hands up, and the Israelites start to lose. Moses’ brother and nephew, physically hold Moses hands up, and ultimately the Israelites win. However, the Israelites didn’t destroy them completely, it says that Joshua only weakened them by the sword. (Exodus 17:13).
After this victory, Gd tells Moses to record this event and Moses builds an alter to God, and writes something very interesting, that God is going to be at war with Amalek throughout all the generations. (Exodus 17:14-16)
What we can learn from this is that when confronting an enemy, we need to do everything that we can to maintain our faith in God, to keep our hands up in prayer and connection. Even if we that means having people physically hold our hands up high. Because when we have faith in God, we win the battle over evil. But when our hands our down, our faith is down, then doubt and subsequent despair sets in, and that’s how we become our weakest and most vulnerable. Amalek wants people to lose faith, to think that Gd doesn’t exist, and doesn’t care about them. This is why God is at war the Amalek throughout the generations.
There’s one more important message that is important for you to know. In book of Deuteronomy, the instruction manual that God gives to the Jewish people before they are about to enter their home land, God tells Moses the following:
Therefore, when your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!(Deut. 25:17-19).
In other words, we receive a mandatory commandment from God to eliminate the Amalek’s existence on earth that not even a memory shall remain. So in the Book of Samuel, Chapter 15, the first Israelite King, Saul, is told by God to fight and destroy the Amalek. God tells Saul to not only to kill all the Amalek men, but also their women, their children, even their animals. Unfortunately, King Saul didn’t listen. He kept the Amalek King Agag, inprisioned and alive for a period of time, and during which the king was able to procreate and the nation of Amalek survived.
For this, King Saul was dethroned by God. The Talmud teaches us that King Saul was punished for being merciful toward the cruel. We cannot tolerant cruelty.
There are numerous other examples in the biblical text about how the cruel the Amalek were, ravaging cities, murdering people, leaving the sick to die, they are, as we read in Deuteronomy, "undeterred by fear of God" (Deut. 25:17). They are not inspired by God’s power, nor can the even recognize the concept and attributes of Godly behavior. Amalek believe in their own power; the power of weapons and human force.
And that’s what we saw, captured on video. What Hamas did in Israel on October 7, 2023, no one with any remote piece of belief in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob could have done. I saw these videos with my own eyes because I wanted to bare witness to these atrocities. They slaughtered children in their beds, they killed the elderly, they tied people up and burned them alive, they tortured children in front of their parents, they filmed slicing open a pregnant woman’s stomach and stabbing the baby while she was alive with her hands pinned down.
Who can do such a thing? NO ONE WITH ANY SENSE OF HUMAN DECENCY or remote fear of God can manage to do all those horrific things. And while they filmed their carnage for the whole world to see, at a modern attempt to create doubt in the belief of God, you see them proud and laughing. This is why God told the Israelites, to not only destroy them, but to BLOT OUT THEIR MEMORY, so that no one should know of such evil in this world.
The main desire of the Amalek is to destroy the belief in the God of the Israelites. And in every generation, the Amalek attempts to eliminate the Jewish people. This is why God will be at war with the Amalek people throughout the generations.
We see from the Book of Esther, written over 2500 years ago, that the villain, Haman, was a descendant of the Amalekite King Agag. The same King that Saul didn’t kill. Haman’s focus was to attempt a genocide and eliminate the Jews from the world. Because Haman, Hitler, Hamas — like their Amalek ancestors — their sole priority is to eliminate the Israelite people and their mission of bringing the God’s teachings to the world.
Hamas and their sympathizers are the modern-day incarnation of Amalek, evil opportunists who are cruel to even their own people. They keep the people of Gaza in poverty, while their leaders fill their own pockets from well-intention donations. Hamas uses innocent people as human shields, indoctrinates children to become murders, shoot rockets from civilian buildings, and prevent their people from leaving areas of war.
So, I ask all of you listening. Please share this information with everyone you know. Call your political representatives, your newspapers, your religious leaders, tell them that you stand with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and that you support Israel in fighting and hopefully, finally getting rid of the Amalek nation of Hamas and their supporters.