September 07th, 2026

By Peggie Potter-Balaun

In 1 Samuel 9-14 there is the account of Saul of the tribe of Benjamin being anointed 
and appointed by Jehovah God to be the first king of Israel and how he disobeyed the
command of God to completely annihilate the pagan Amalekites. Now before we wince
at the thought that the loving God of Israel would make such a request please keep
in mind several things:
First, the Amalekites had been determined to destroy the Hebrew people since their release from slavery in Egypt.
Second, they were a cruel pagan people who regularly sacrificed their own children to idols. The Word of God says that a nation who practices such things is cursed (Jeremiah 22:3) and those who practice such things are already considered dead (Galatians 5:19-21 and Romans 1:32 ) This was also before the age of grace and Father God, thirdly, was intent on keeping the nation He had covenanted with to give birth to His Son Jesus, the Messiah and Savior of the world !
  King Saul's failure to obey God led to the escape of the Amalekite king Agag's pregnant queen whose decendants became known as the Agagites.
   Fast forward to the time of Judah's captivity in Babylon . Under the Persian king Xerxes' rule an evil man know as Haman the Agagite persuaded the king to rule that the Jewish people living in the Persian empire should be annihilated. A young beautiful Jew, a Benjamite and her cousin and guardian Mordecai, discovered this plot shortly after she became King Xerxes'queen. Unlike king Saul, Mordecai and this brave young woman risked their own lives to expose this plot ! They succeeded, where king
Saul centuries before had failed potentially leaving the Jewish people vulnerable to
genocide at the hands of an evil Amalekite/Agagite !
   People tend to forget that our omniscient God knows the beginning from the end as
well as the past from the future. It is, therefore, never a good idea to disobey Him.
As the old hymn says,"trust & obey, cause there's no other way...". We don't always
know why God asks certain things of certain people. We must indeed always trust
that Father God knows best !