Excellent point.
Those engaged in such evil see mercy as weakness and it emboldens them. They do not understand mercy.
Amalek is the Jewish canon’s name for all of the people who attack the weak and unarmed. We are obliged not only to wipe out such people but even to erase their name, so the memory of them will be forgotten.
The duty to do that stems from the attack that the nation of Amalek carried out on the Jewish people when they were wandering in the desert. The bible teaches that Amalek attacked the weakest part of the children of Israel, the people who were at the back as they walked, who were weak and unable to defend themselves.
The Rabbis understood that this drive to attack the weak would be an ongoing problem. Boy, where they right — see October 7. That’s why the obligation to destroy them is also a continuing duty.
Yes, and Saul let the King of the Amalekites, Agag, to live and to be an ancestor of Haman who instigated the First Holocaust, commemorated with the Feast of Purim. The second Holocaust was prophesied in large/small letter code in the Book of Esther where Esther asks the “King” to hang the 10 sons of Haman after they have been hanged already.
Clearly, YHWH knows that the Jews will screw things up. It seems to be part of the plan, and they are not disappointing on this.
we know very well from example of Saul and Amalekites that we must follow God’s insruction to destroy every one. and that has not been revoked in the years that followed.
I already discussed this quite well here recently.
When the Hebrews had mercy on some of the enemies one of the survivors had a child whose later child grew up to be Haman who made it a point to send his soldiers to find and slaughter every Jew he could find. Haman is the one remembered sneeringly with “Hamentaschen” pastries, said to be the three cornered hat he wore but actually because people used to save enemies’ severed ears as souvenirs, so the pastries are his ears (complete with moist strawberry fillings in some).
The lesson was to refrain from making your own decisions based on disagreeing with God’s orders to you. Do it God’s way.
Deuteronomy 20:17
but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded,