King Saul’s Final Rejection

The great bedouin, tribes of the Amalekites, still continued as the hereditary enemies of Israel. At Sinai and in the days of Gideon these nomads had harassed Israel, and now under Saul they had become a ruthless enemy of Judah and Simeon in the south of the land. According to the instruction of Moses they must be exterminated. Heaping crime upon crime they had long ago become ripe for judgment. The sword of their chief Agag had made women childless. Samuel therefore once more came to Saul...