About a year and a half ago, a revolution started in Syria. It began with peaceful protests against the oppressive regime of King Al-Assad. These protests were met with increasing cruelty and repression by Assad and his supporters. Eventually the protests transitioned to armed rebellion, and now a civil war has begun.
Assad grows more and more violent every week. Recently he defended his actions as necessary for the health of the nation: “When a surgeon in an operating room ... cuts and cleans and amputates, and the wound bleeds, do we say to him your hands are stained with blood? ... Or do we thank him for saving the patient?”
On May 25, soldiers and pro-government forces attacked the city of Houla just after nightfall.
For about five hours they looted homes and killed whole families. A total of 108 people were killed, including 49 children and 34 women.
This was an open attempt to terrorize Syria’s people into giving up the revolution. The photos of children stabbed, shot, and beaten to death have outraged the world into near unanimous condemnation and disgust.
Hold this disgust and horror in mind as we turn to our Biblical text today. Only these real events can set the proper frame for what we are about to read.
1 Samuel 15:1-23
One day Samuel said to Saul, “It was the Lord who told me to anoint you as king of his people, Israel. Now listen to this message from the Lord! 2 This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies has declared: I have decided to settle accounts with the nation of Amalek for opposing Israel when they came from Egypt. 3 Now go and completely destroy the entire Amalekite nation—men, women, children, babies, cattle, sheep, goats, camels, and donkeys.”
