Exodus (The NIV Application Commentary) by Zondervan

Author:Zondervan
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: REL006060 Religion / Biblical Commentary / Old Testament
ISBN: 9780310520740
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2014-11-04T05:00:00+00:00

Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and cut off all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God. When the LORD your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!

It seems best to understand the reference to blotting out the Amalekites in Exodus 17:14 as God’s promise of what he will eventually do through Saul and David. Perhaps the events of verses 8–16 do not actually bring an end to these peoples, only their sound defeat and the promise of their inevitable demise.

Another question concerns why God plans such cataclysmic destruction on a relatively insignificant group of desert dwellers. Why not simply beat them at Rephidim and move on without needing to come back later to finish the job? Doesn’t God go a bit overboard here? Perhaps, but might this not be an indication of the special care God gives to his people? One can understand this incident as a clear display of the extent to which God protects his people. Moreover, this is not the first example of God “going ballistic” in the book of Exodus. Egypt, too, met a horrible and irrevocable end. If God treated Egypt the way he did, a people who tried to prevent Israel’s deliverance, should we not also expect God to treat the Amalekites in a similar manner, since these people are trying to prevent their going any further?

Reference to an altar in verse 15 is another foreshadow of later events. Moses is commanded to build another altar in 20:24–26, and he builds one at the foot of Mount Sinai in 24:4. Instructions for building an altar for burnt offerings (27:1–8; 38:1–7) and incense (37:25–28) are also given, and there are frequent references to altars in chapters 29–31, 35, and 38–40. In the final chapter of the book (ch. 40), altars are mentioned no less than nine times, and over a hundred times from Leviticus through Deuteronomy. The altar at Rephidim is the first altar Moses builds, and as such it serves as a hint of the importance altars will take on throughout the remainder of the book and the Pentateuch.

This altar also connects Moses to the past. It was common practice for the patriarchs to set up altars as memorials of some sort (although a name is associated only with the altars mentioned in Gen. 33:20 and 35:7). The purpose of the altar here is not for sacrifice but, in keeping with the meaning of verse 14, a means by which Israel will remember what God has done for them in the desert. Hence, like the writing in the scroll in verse 14 and several other acts in the previous chapters, the view here is once again toward the future.

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