Then Samuel said, “Bring here to me Agag the king of the Amalekites.” And Agag came to him cheerfully. Agag said, “Surely the bitterness of death is past.” And Samuel said, “As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women.” And Samuel hacked Agag to pieces before the LORD in Gilgal.
Then Samuel went to Ramah, and Saul went up to his house in Gibeah of Saul. And Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the LORD regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel. | 1 Samuel 15:32-35
At the end of a very violent chapter of the Bible, where God commands Saul to destroy the Amalekites an then punishes him for not being thorough enough, we have this feel good story about a prophet, a king, a sword, and a violent murder (this is why I referenced Game of Thrones a bunch when I introduced the book of 1 Samuel). All of this leaves us feeling extremely uneasy about the God we worship. Why is God so violent and harsh?
Like beauty, harshness is in the eye of the beholder. The concept of justice requires a harshness toward evil that we are often uncomfortable with, to the point of withholding justice. We live in a society that has shifted value from absolute truth to individualism. When this happens, anything that negatively affects the individual is seem as working against justice. This is a false assumption. If evil resides within the individual, then self cannot be the ultimate. There has to be a good outside of self to which we all aspire. That good will define the bad; the bad will define justice.
When we come to God we see this pure justice, that defines things as bad that we have decided are good; that punishes things we don’t see as deserving it. When we come face to face with this, we have to ask ourselves: what do we do with this God ? The postmodern answer to this question is: we have evolved morally beyond God. He was once needed to keep pre-modern people in place, but we know better and have become enlightened. In this, human reasoning is elevated to the place of God. Our ability to know and feel becomes the new absolute that measures right and wrong (even if we use that absolute to declare everything subjective). The Bible calls us to do is accept Gods justice as perfect and good, and to learn from this disconnect. Learn what?
- God’s view of sin is different than ours.
- That we are bent towards justifying sin over pursuing holiness.
- This situation makes us unable to know good or pursue God on our own.
You may accept all of these things and still be left asking: but why all of the killing? The killing, much like the concept of Hell, brings a depth to sin that goes along with the width of justice. Not only is sin much more than we think, but it is also much more damaging and offensive to God. When we realize that the rejection of the Creator deserves death, we start to feel a much greater weight to our own predicament. Not only have we sinned, in various ways, but each one of those sins, on their own, deserved a death we don’t face. When Samuel hacks up king Agag, it is in obedience to God, acting out a justice we do not understand, in a way that highlights the immensity of what we are rescued from.
When it comes to how we should act out of this, we have to be careful. The nation of Israel had a specific role to reveal God to the nations through their lives; their story exists for us to know what sin is (not a model to follow). Through Jesus, who took on the harshness of sin, we are promised that all justice will be taken care of by God. We can set aside this physical idea of harsh and live out of the grace He secures.
Instead of looking around for the Agag to hack up, recognize that we are Agag and his fate is what we deserve. Be overwhelmed by every moment that we are not hacked to pieces for our sinful rejection of God. Then live with a grief for sin and a gratitude for grace that make you both serious for holiness and forgiving toward those who fail to live it out.