Kill man and woman, infant and suckling?

Saul was sent to “smite Amalek.” He was told to “utterly destroy all that they have and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” To men who do not recognise God’s side of human affairs, this is very shocking. It is barbarism pure and simple. But with Christ, God’s side of human affairs was the great side, and if we are Christ’s, it will be because we share his views. Now he said “the Scripture cannot be broken.” Therefore to him, there was nothing barbarous in this dooming of the Amalekites to destruction. And I think to unbiassed reason, there can be nothing but sober propriety in it when all the elements of the case are allowed their place. The first element is that “the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof: the world and all that dwell therein.” Grant that God has made, who can deny His right to destroy? And if He have the right to destroy, who will deny that He is the sole judge as to when and for what reason that right is to be exercised? He made man, not merely for human satisfaction, but for divine pleasure. When man ceases to please, may He not send him forth from Eden to death, or drown a whole population in a flood of waters, or give over seven wicked nations to the sword of Joshua? Reason cannot falter in the answer, though human feeling may have its objections. Reason illuminated by knowledge feels no jar as it listens to the command issued to Saul to extirpate the Amalekites who proved themselves adversaries to the work of God when He brought Israel out of Egypt, and who ever since had walked in their own evil ways. We may also discern a certain teaching of wisdom which is also unpalatable to human thought, namely, that human life is not the precious thing in God’s eyes that it seems in man’s. The whole sentiment of Scripture is strong on this point. “All nations before him are as nothing, and they are counted unto him as less than nothing and vanity” (Isa. 40:17). “All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass” (1 Pet. 1:24). And is not experience in harmony with this declaration? A man cooped up in a confined line of life in which he only sees certain persons and does certain things and reads certain books all the year round, may nurse himself into the idea that human life is of sacred and lasting interest. But let a man go abroad and live long enough to behold not only the endless multitudes, but the endless diversifications and the endless abortivenesses of human life, and the bottomless abyss of decay and death that everywhere yearly receives into itself a ceaseless stream of gigantic volume, he will feel within himself the sentiment that David expressed when he said, “Lord, what is man that thou takest knowledge of him and the son of man that thou visitest him?”

1898 Christadelphian, 35(electronic ed.), 424–425.