"Genocide" and the Bible Part 20 The Amalekites & 1 Sam 15

I Samuel 15

So, what options would Israel have had concerning the fatherless Amalekite family, once the warriors had been eliminated in battle?
There are ONLY four options to consider:

1. Take them back as slaves (or to be sold as slaves)
2. Take them back and turn them over to social relief programs/processes in Israel.
3. Leave them there in the desert to their fate
4. Kill them there in the desert

Option 1: Take them back as slaves (or to be sold as slaves).

This was, of course, what some other nations would have done. In fact, this is what many nations would have initiated the conflict for (see my discussion on OT Slavery for more documentation and discussion of this, and especially the horrors of being a foreign/POW female slave). The Amalekites alone would be an example of raids to produce slaves for re-sale in the slave trade:

"On of the most valuable spoils of battle was the people. In the UR III period some tablets recorded long lists of women and children...Sometimes women and children were included as part of the general massacre, but usually they became slaves."

This was (1) against God's strong slavery laws for Israel, who forbade them to make slaves, engage in slave-trade, or turn over runaways, etc. But more importantly, (2) it was practically impossible at the time--the country/people did not have resources to assimilate this many new people, ALL of whom would have needed to be fed and clothed at a difficult period of Israel's history (still at the height of Philistine warfare and Transjordanian aggression). At a practical level--as actual ancient "slave societies" have taught us-- adult slaves generated by foreign wars often harbor revenge, and wait for that night in which they can kill you in your sleep. The effects on societies of these types of internal hostile elements are well-known.

This is a purely-practical consideration, but one that has to be considered in understanding why this option was not open to the Israelite nation.

I might also point out that God very, very rarely uses the miraculous, never to solve systematic, long-term infrastructure problems like welfare. There was plenty of want, hunger, thirst, disease during the period of the Judges, but God didn't do any miracles for His own people. There were many such situations during the Monarchy, and during the life of the Patriarchs as well--but no miracles. When Jesus walked on earth and performed His selective miracles, there were multitudes of people who were NOT healed, who died "prematurely" , who were abused/exploited by the Romans. The ONLY large-scale or population-wide miracles I can think of were those forty years during the Wilderness Wanderings--a mere blip in biblical history--and they were never foreshadowed during the famines of the Patriarchs nor repeated during the droughts and famines of Israel

Unfortunately, this was simply not an option in the historical situation of the time. [In today's world, it sometimes is—as in refugee work--but it is unreasonable to expect them back then to be able to do something that absolutely could not be supported by the limited infrastructure of the ancient and formative societies.

Credits and Sources:

Glen Miller: http://www.christian-thinktank.com/
James Patrick Holding: http://www.tektonics.org/

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