Agag

Agag was the king of the Amalekites whom Saul took alive and spared, and whom Samuel put to death at Gilgal (1 Samuel 15:8-9, 32-33). The episode falls within Saul's reign (about 1050 to 1010 BC), and it is here that Samuel tells Saul that the Lord has rejected him from being king (1 Samuel 15:23, 26). The name reappears in the book of Esther as the gentilic of Haman the Agagite (Esther 3:1).

Biblical Account

Samuel delivered the Lord's command to punish Amalek for what the Amalekites had done to Israel on the way out of Egypt, and to devote to destruction all that they had, "man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey" (1 Samuel 15:2-3; compare Exodus 17:14-16; Deuteronomy 25:17-19). Saul struck the Amalekites "from Havilah as far as Shur, which is east of Egypt," and took Agag alive, but "Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs, and all that was good" (1 Samuel 15:7-9). At Gilgal Saul insisted, "I have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction" (1 Samuel 15:20), then admitted that he had "feared the people and obeyed their voice" (1 Samuel 15:24), and Samuel told him that the Lord had rejected him from being king (1 Samuel 15:26).

Samuel then called for Agag. The Hebrew describes his approach with a word the ESV renders "cheerfully" and the KJV "delicately," though some translators read it as "in chains"; Agag said, "Surely the bitterness of death is past" (1 Samuel 15:32). Samuel replied, "As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women," and "hacked Agag to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal" (1 Samuel 15:33). The verb occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible.

The Name

Agag is named once before Saul's day. In the third oracle of Balaam, spoken in the plains of Moab about 1406 BC, Israel's king "shall be higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted" (Numbers 24:7). Many commentators, including Keil and Delitzsch and the Pulpit Commentary, take Agag as a dynastic title of the Amalekite kings on the pattern of Pharaoh in Egypt. The Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch read "Gog" for "Agag" in this verse. The meaning of the name is uncertain; one proposal links it to the Akkadian verb agagu, "to be angry."

Haman the Agagite

Haman, son of Hammedatha, whom Ahasuerus set above all his officials, is five times called "the Agagite" (Esther 3:1, 10; 8:3, 5; 9:24). The text does not explain the term. Read alongside 1 Samuel 15, it presents the man who "plotted against the Jews to destroy them" (Esther 9:24) as an heir of the Amalekite royal house, opposed by Esther and by Mordecai, a Benjaminite descended from Kish (Esther 2:5), which is also the name of Saul's father. The Greek text of Esther instead calls Haman a "Bougaean," and some scholars derive that label from a Persian word.

Historical Context

The Amalekites were a nomadic people of the Negev and northern Sinai, descended from Amalek, grandson of Esau (Genesis 36:12), and their attack on Israel's stragglers after the Exodus of 1446 BC had brought a standing sentence against them (Exodus 17:16; Deuteronomy 25:19). Before the battle Saul warned the Kenites, who had shown kindness to Israel in the wilderness, to withdraw from among them (1 Samuel 15:6). The Amalekites are not named in any known extrabiblical inscription, and this Agag is known only from Scripture, though the name itself appears in Phoenician and Punic texts.

Theological Significance

Samuel's words, "to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams" (1 Samuel 15:22), treat the spared king and the spared livestock as one act of disobedience, and Agag's death "before the Lord" at Gilgal carries out the sentence Saul had withheld. Esther closes the arc: the house of Agag rises once more, and this time the Jews "laid no hand on the plunder" (Esther 9:10, 15, 16), in pointed contrast with Saul at Amalek.