Amalek Came Because Israel Had Let Its Torah Go Dry

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Amalek Came Without a Herald

Amalek came. No embassy arrived first, no demand for water or for passage, no herald with a grievance and a price. The people at Rephidim had a well one day and an army the next (Exodus 17:8).

Heaven's account of it was drier than the sand. A reed does not grow without swamp. Grass does not come up without water. Israel had let its Torah go dry, and an enemy does not invent his opening. He walks through the one already standing open.

The camp met it as weather. It was arithmetic.

Moses Went Up and Joshua Went Out

Moses gave Joshua his orders and told him where to look for him. Choose men. Go out and fight Amalek. "Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand" (Exodus 17:9).

The hill was not a lookout and it was not scenery. Under his sandals lay the deeds of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Under those, holding up the whole slope, lay the deeds of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah. Moses climbed his own dead and stood on them.

He did not go up empty-handed.

He Read the Staff's Record Aloud

He held the staff where it could be seen and laid out his case like a man setting documents on a table one at a time.

"Lord of the universe. With this staff You brought Israel out of Egypt."

"With this staff You split the sea for them."

"With this staff You worked miracles and mighty acts for them."

"With this staff You will work miracles and mighty acts for them at this hour."

Three of those sentences were precedent and the fourth was the request. He was not decorating a prayer with old victories. He was arguing that a rescue granted three times to the same people, through the same piece of wood, cannot be refused a fourth time on the grounds that they have gone slack.

Aaron and Hur Held His Arms Until Sundown

Down on the sand it worked like a lever, and everybody could see it working. When his hand was up, Israel was winning. When it came down, Amalek was winning. Men died in the gaps.

His arms went to lead. Aaron and Hur pushed a stone under him so he could sit, then took a side each and held his hands up, and they held them steady until the sun went down (Exodus 17:11-13). One tired shoulder on that rock meant more bodies at the back of the column, where Amalek liked to work.

Erase, and Erase Again

When the field went quiet, God gave Moses a sentence with the verb doubled. "For erase I shall erase the remembrance of Amalek from under the heavens" (Exodus 17:14).

The first erasing is this world. The second is the world to come. Nothing left here and nothing left there, no sons, no border, no reputation that a later century can polish into something worth admiring.

"The remembrance" already had a face on it. Centuries out, in a Persian palace, Haman would cast lots for the date on which every Jew in the empire would die, and he came down out of this line. Rabbi Yehoshua read the doubling a second way: erase him and his descendants, erase him and his families. Neither reading leaves room for a partial job.

Then God told Moses to write it in a book, which is the strange part. A people marked for total erasure has to be written down and remembered by name, or nobody will know whom to blot out. Moses took the scroll and wrote. Forgetting was never on the list.