Dr Paul Allen

One of the standard ways that the New Atheists attack Christianity is by using some of the Old Testament war passages to argue that God is violent and petty. One of the favourite passages for this is the so-called Amalekite Genocide of 1 Samuel 15 . But difficulties with passages such as this are not restricted to atheists. In 2009, the popular website Ship of Fools ran a feature called Chapter and Worse. 1 Readers were invited to submit their least favourite Bible passages, and an evangelical acquaintance of mine submitted 1 Samuel 15:3 . And Samuel said to Saul, “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore listen to the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’” ( 1 Sam 15:1 ‑3

Samuel_reproving_Saul (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Did Samuel make a mistake? Was Samuel human like everyone else? ( 1 Samuel 9–11; 13; 15-17).  Do you feel for Saul. He started well but finished badly. According to 1 Samuel 9:2, he was “An impressive young man without equal.” After Saul has been briefly introduced, we immediately start into the story of how Saul and Samuel meet. In verse 9, we are given some parenthetical background information. “Before time in Israel ,” it tells us, “when a man went to enquire of God , thus he spake, Come, and let us go to the seer: for he that is now called a Prophet was before time called a Seer.” The picture we have in 1 Samuel 9–10 is of a good and modest man (compare verse 1 of chapter 9 with verse 21 in the same chapter) who has the wisdom to keep his mouth shut (1 Samuel 10:14–16) and the good sense to at least try avoiding the limelight (1 Samuel 10:21–22). But whether he likes it or not, he’s going to be king, and he’ll have to deal