Bible Reference > Bible Facts > People in the Bible
Quick Summary
The Amalekites were a nomadic people of the Negev and Sinai deserts, traced in Genesis to Amalek, a grandson of Esau. They were the first people to attack Israel after the Exodus, striking the weak and weary at the back of the line. That attack made them Israel's archetypal enemy. Moses fought them with his arms raised at Rephidim, Saul lost his kingdom for sparing their king, Agag, and David rescued his family from an Amalekite raid at Ziklag. Jewish tradition later linked Haman, the villain of Esther, to Agag. The Amalekites leave no trace outside the Bible, but the command to "remember Amalek" is still read aloud in synagogues every year.
Introduction
There is a strange command near the end of Deuteronomy. Moses tells Israel to "blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven," and in the very next breath he says, "do not forget" (Deuteronomy 25:19). Erase their memory. Never forget them. Both at once.
That tension runs through every page where the Amalekites appear. They are a real people in the desert, raiders on camels who hit and run. They are also something more, a name Israel kept for the kind of enemy who preys on the weak. To understand who the Amalekites were, you have to hold both of those together.
Scripture Reference
Genesis 14:7; 36:12, 16; Exodus 17:8–16; Numbers 13:29; 14:39–45; 24:20; Deuteronomy 25:17–19; Judges 6:3; 1 Samuel 15; 27:8; 30; 2 Samuel 1:1–16; 1 Chronicles 4:42–43; Esther 3:1; Psalm 83:7
Who Were the Amalekites?
Family Ties to Israel
Genesis 36 traces the Amalekites to Amalek, the son of Esau's son Eliphaz and a woman named Timna (Genesis 36:12). That makes Amalek Esau's grandson and Jacob's great-nephew. The Amalekites, in other words, were relatives. Their story belongs to the long and bitter rivalry between the descendants of Jacob and the descendants of Esau, the same rivalry that runs through Israel's dealings with the Edomites.
There is one puzzle. Genesis 14:7, set in Abraham's time, mentions "all the country of the Amalekites" generations before Amalek was born. Most readers take it as the writer calling the region by the name it carried in his own day.
Where They Lived
The Amalekites were nomads. The spies reported that "the Amalekites live in the land of the Negeb" (Numbers 13:29), the dry south below Judah, and they ranged across the Sinai Peninsula toward Egypt. They moved with their flocks, raided settled villages, and rode camels into battle. In the days of Gideon, they joined the Midianites in yearly raids that stripped Israel's fields bare at harvest time (Judges 6:3–5; see Who Was Gideon in the Bible?).
A People Without Ruins
No inscription outside the Bible mentions the Amalekites, and archaeologists have not identified any site as theirs. That is not unusual for desert nomads. People who live in tents and keep moving leave little behind for the shovel. It does mean that everything we know about the Amalekites comes from the people who considered them their worst enemy, and readers should keep that in mind.
Israel and Amalek: Five Encounters
1. Rephidim: Arms Raised Until Sundown (Exodus 17:8–16)
Israel had barely crossed the sea. They were thirsty, complaining, and camped at Rephidim when Amalek attacked. Moses sent Joshua to lead the fighting and climbed a hill with the staff of God in his hand. As long as Moses held up his hands, Israel prevailed. When his arms dropped, Amalek prevailed. So Aaron and Hur sat him on a stone and held up his arms, one on each side, "so his hands were steady until the sun set."
After the battle Moses built an altar and named it "The LORD is my banner" (see Yahweh Nissi: The Lord My Banner). God told him to write the event down "as a reminder in a book," the first time in the Bible that God tells anyone to write something.
Many preachers have found a picture of the church in this scene: a leader who cannot hold up his own arms, and two friends who hold them up for him.
2. Why Amalek Was Different (Deuteronomy 25:17–19)
Forty years later, Moses explained why this enemy was to be remembered. Amalek "attacked you on the way, when you were faint and weary, and struck down all who lagged behind you; he did not fear God." Amalek did not meet Israel's army in the field. They went after the stragglers, the old, the sick, and the exhausted at the back of the line. In the Bible's memory, that is what made Amalek Amalek.
3. Saul and King Agag (1 Samuel 15)
Centuries later, Samuel gave King Saul a command: attack Amalek and "utterly destroy all that they have." Saul won the battle but spared King Agag and kept the best of the sheep and cattle, saying they were for sacrifice. Samuel's answer has become one of the most quoted lines in the Old Testament: "Surely, to obey is better than sacrifice" (1 Samuel 15:22). Samuel put Agag to death himself, and the episode marks the moment God rejected Saul as king. See Who Was King Saul? Israel's First King.
The story has a strange echo. When Saul dies on Mount Gilboa, the man who brings David the news, and claims to have finished Saul off, is an Amalekite (2 Samuel 1:1–16).
4. David at Ziklag (1 Samuel 30)
While David was away with the Philistine army, Amalekite raiders burned his town of Ziklag and carried off every woman and child, including David's wives. David's own men talked of stoning him. Then, the text says, "David strengthened himself in the LORD his God."
David's men chased the raiders so hard that two hundred of them were too exhausted to cross the Wadi Besor and stayed behind. The other four hundred found the Amalekites feasting, struck them, and brought back every person and everything that had been taken. When some of the soldiers said the men who stayed behind should get nothing, David refused. "For the share of the one who goes down into the battle shall be the same as the share of the one who stays by the baggage; they shall share alike" (1 Samuel 30:24).
It is hard to miss the contrast. Amalek struck the weary who lagged behind. David made sure the weary who lagged behind got an equal share.
5. Haman the Agagite (Esther 3:1)
The Amalekites fade from the record after a remnant is destroyed in the days of King Hezekiah (1 Chronicles 4:42–43). But the Book of Esther introduces its villain as "Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite." Jewish tradition has long read "Agagite" as a descendant of Agag, the king Saul spared. Mordecai, the hero, is from the tribe of Benjamin, Saul's tribe. Read that way, Esther finishes an old story: a Benjaminite and an Agagite meet again, and this time the outcome is different. See What Is Purim in the Bible?
Remembering Amalek: How the Command Has Been Read
The command in 1 Samuel 15:3 is one of the hardest verses in the Bible: "kill both man and woman, child and infant." Jews and Christians have wrestled with it for a very long time, and many have looked for ways to keep it from being turned against living people.
In Jewish Tradition
On the Sabbath before Purim, called Shabbat Zachor, the "Sabbath of Remembrance," synagogues read Deuteronomy 25:17–19 aloud. Many Jews hear it as a duty to remember the persecutions their people have survived, from Haman to the Holocaust.
The rabbis also limited the command. The Talmud teaches that the Assyrian king Sennacherib scattered and mixed the ancient nations, so no living people can be identified as Amalek. Over time, Jewish teachers came to read Amalek as a symbol of evil itself. A Hasidic teaching points out that the Hebrew letters of "Amalek" add up to the same number as the word for "doubt," and reads the battle with Amalek as the struggle against the doubt that weakens faith from within.
In Christian Tradition
Early Christian writers often read the Amalek stories as pictures of the spiritual life. Moses' outstretched arms reminded them of the cross. The battle at Rephidim became a lesson in prayer, which wins battles the sword cannot. Saul's half-obedience in 1 Samuel 15 became a warning about offering God religious activity in place of a changed heart.
For the broader question of how Christians have handled the Bible's commands to destroy whole peoples, see the discussion in Who Were the Canaanites?
Amalek as a Label
Because Amalek became a symbol, people have applied the name to their enemies. Some Puritan preachers in colonial New England compared Native Americans to the Amalekites during the wars of the seventeenth century.
The name returned to the news more recently. In October 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted the command "remember what Amalek did to you" in a speech about the war with Hamas. South Africa cited the line in its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Netanyahu rejected that reading, saying the reference was to Hamas and its October 7 attack, not to Palestinians as a people. Supporters and critics continue to read the remark differently.
That history is part of why the old question still matters. The Bible gives Amalek a specific identity: the enemy who preyed on the weary at the back of the line. Every generation has to decide who, if anyone, fits that description.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are there Amalekites today?
No. The Bible's last mention of the Amalekites as a living people is in 1 Chronicles 4:42–43, in the days of King Hezekiah, around 700 BC. No group today can trace itself to them, and Jewish tradition holds that the ancient nations can no longer be identified.
What did the Amalekites do that was so wrong?
The Bible's answer is specific. They attacked Israel in the wilderness from behind, striking "all who lagged behind you" when the people were "faint and weary," and "did not fear God" (Deuteronomy 25:18). They were also raiders who returned again and again to plunder Israel's towns and harvests.
Why did God tell Saul to destroy the Amalekites?
First Samuel 15:2 says it was to punish what Amalek did to Israel on the way out of Egypt. The command, including women and children, is one of the most troubling in Scripture, and Jewish and Christian interpreters have answered it in different ways, from seeing it as a unique act of judgment to reading it as Israel's understanding of God in a violent age.
Who killed King Agag?
The prophet Samuel. After Saul spared Agag, Samuel had him brought forward and "hewed Agag in pieces before the LORD in Gilgal" (1 Samuel 15:33).
Was Haman an Amalekite?
The Book of Esther calls Haman "the Agagite" (Esther 3:1). Jewish tradition reads that as a descendant of King Agag, which makes him an Amalekite. Some scholars think "Agagite" may refer to a place or family name instead, but the traditional reading is why Purim is so closely tied to the command to remember Amalek.
How were the Amalekites related to Israel?
They were cousins. Amalek was a grandson of Esau, Jacob's twin brother (Genesis 36:12).
Works Consulted
Alter, Robert. The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999.
Berlin, Adele, and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds. The Jewish Study Bible. 2nd edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Brueggemann, Walter. First and Second Samuel. Interpretation. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990.
Sarna, Nahum M. Exploring Exodus: The Origins of Biblical Israel. New York: Schocken Books, 1986.
Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 28a.
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).
