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Amalek (; "Amalek". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. ) is described in the Hebrew Bible as the enemy of the nation of the Israelites. The name "Amalek" can refer to the descendants of Amalek, the grandson of Esau, or anyone who lived in their territories in Canaan, or descendants of Ham, the son of Noah. Amalekite denotes a tribe that dwelt in Arabia Petraea, between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea. They were not the descendants of Amalek, the son of Eliphaz, for they existed in the days of Abraham (Gen 14:7).
Richard C. Steiner has suggested that the name is derived from the Egyptian term *ꜥꜣm rqj "hostile Asiatic", possibly referring to Shasu tribesmen from around Edom.Richard C. Steiner (2025). 9781614911104, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures. ISBN 9781614911104
According to the Hebrew Bible, the Amalekites inhabited the Negev and Sinai Peninsula. They appear to have lived a or seminomadic lifestyle along the fringes of southern Canaan's agricultural zone. This is probably based on the association of this tribal group with the steppe region of ancient Israel and the area of Kadesh (Genesis 14:7).
As a people, the Amalekites are identified throughout the Hebrew Bible as a recurrent enemy of the Israelites:
Many rabbinic authorities such as Maimonides ruled that the commandment only applies to a Jewish king or an organized community, and cannot be performed by an individual.Maimonides (Sefer Hamitzvot, end of positive commandments), Nachmanides (Commentary to Exodus 17:16), Sefer HaYereim (435), Hagahot Maimoniyot (Hilchot Melachim 5:5) According to Rashi, the Amalekites were sorcerers who could transform themselves to resemble animals, in order to avoid capture. Thus, in , it was considered necessary to destroy the livestock when destroying Amalek.Rashi, 1 Samuel 15:3 commentary, The Rubin Edition, , p. 93 According to Haggahot Maimuniyyot, the commandment only applies to the Messianic Age and not present times; medieval authorities widely support this limitation. According to the Midrash, every nation on Earth has a guardian angel overseeing its destiny, except for two: Israel rejected archangel Michael as its guardian, in favor of God himself. The other is Amalek, whose guardian angel is the foremost angel of evil, Satan. The final war will be fought between the children of God and the children of Satan, between good and evil. This is possibly why the 188th commandment exists: to wipe out Amalek completely, male and female, young and old, sparing none, since evil has no future. However, one obscure prophecy states that all nations will eventually worship God alone, which raises the question of how there can be a Third Temple when Amalek is annihilated. The Midrash state there is no quandary, given the last Amalekite is a convert to Judaism.THE MIDRASH SAYS, Copyright 1980 Rabbi Moshe Weissman, Brooklyn, NY. Benei Yakov Publications 1742 E.7th St. Brooklyn, NY 11223.
Maimonides elaborates that when the Jewish people wage war against Amalek, they must request the Amalekites to accept the Seven Laws of Noah and pay a tax to the Jewish kingdom. If they refuse, they are to be executed.Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Melachim uMilchamot, 6:1 and 6:4
Other Talmudic commentators argued that the calls to spare no Amalekite or "blot out their memory" were metaphorical and did not require the actual killing of Amalekites. Samson Raphael Hirsch said that the command was to destroy "the remembrance of Amalek" rather than actual Amalekites.Commentary to Deuteronomy 25 Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter interpreted the command as thoroughly hating Amalek without performing any physical action.Shemot Zachor 646 Yisrael Meir Kagan said that God would perform the elimination of Amalek and that Jews only need to remember what Amalek did to them.Introduction to positive commandments, Beer Mayim Hayim, letter Alef
Isaac S.D. Sassoon believes that the ḥerem commands existed to prevent the Jewish community from being endangered but believes people should think twice before literally following them. Nathan Lopes Cardazo argues that the Torah's ethically questionable laws were intentional since they were a result of God working with an underdeveloped world. He believes that God appointed the Chazal to help humanity evolve in their understanding of the Torah.
According to Christian Hofreiter, almost all Christian authorities and theologians have historically interpreted the ḥerem passages literally. He states that "there is practically no historical evidence that anyone in the Great Church" viewed them as being purely an allegory. In particular, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin have defended a literal reading of these passages at length. Origen is sometimes cited as having viewed the ḥerem passages allegorically; Hofreiter argues that although Origen prioritized a spiritual interpretation of the Bible, he did not deny that the herem passages described historical events.
Gili Kugler of the University of Haifa argues that the biblical tradition that commands Amalek’s extermination cannot be explained simply by the nation’s actions, since the Hebrew Bible often depicts Amalek in surprisingly neutral terms and does not give a clear justification for their unique fate. Instead, she suggests that the command to annihilate Amalek reflects political, theological, and psychological frameworks within Israelite society. In her view, the portrayal of Amalek developed as a "mythical enemy" used to negotiate Israel’s self-understanding: from a political standpoint, the Amalek tradition was employed in struggles over kingship, particularly in shaping the Saul and David narratives; from a theological standpoint, Amalek functioned as Israel’s rejected counterpart, a kin-people portrayed as the "rejected son" which ultimately reinforces Israel’s chosenness; and from a psychological standpoint, Amalek served as a scapegoat for the Israelites’ feelings of self-negation as well as their own existential fears of destruction. Kugler thus interprets the Amalek tradition as a projection of "metaphysical hatred", where hostility toward Amalek is rooted less in Amalek itself than in Israel’s attempt to define and preserve its identity.
According to Ada Taggar-Cohen of Doshisha University, ḥerem commands were not uncommon in the ancient Near East. These commands had a dual purpose: convey to an enemy that the aggressor's deity was on their side, and that the enemy deserved the deity's wrath as punishment for their "sins". They also allowed kings to pursue militarist policies without accepting moral responsibility. C. L. Crouch of Radboud University considers the ḥerem commands to be an exceptional component to Israelite and Judahite warfare. They were erratically applied, even in the early stages of national and ethnic identity formation, and were an extreme means to eradicate the threat of chaos, views shared by Assyrian rulers such as Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal.
Paul Copan argues that the ḥerem commands were hyperbolic since the passages contain such as "man and woman" and Near Easterners valued "bravado and exaggeration" when reporting warfare. Kluger believes this is an earnest attempt to absolve the Israelites, and their God, of moral responsibility. Nonetheless, she argues Copan's interpretation still "normalizes mass violence" and "hostility towards targeted groups". However, scholars such as John H. Walton and Kenneth Kitchen also concluded that such language in the Hebrew Bible was hyperbolic, based on comparisons to the language of other literary cultures.Walton, J. H. (2017). The lost world of the Israelite conquest : covenant, retribution, and the fate of the Canaanites. IVP Academic. p.16Kitchen, Kenneth A. (2003), On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Eerdmans. p. 97.
However, some scholars propose a connection between Amalekites and certain fortified settlements in the Negev highlands, such as Tel Masos near Beer-sheba, which is possibly equivalent to ancient Hormah.Aharon Kempinski, "Tel Masos: Its Importance in Relation to the Settlement of the Tribes of Israel in the Northern Negev," Expedition Magazine vol. 20, issue 4 1978. If true, Saul's campaigns against the Amalekites may have been motivated by a strategic desire to control of copper production at Tel Masos, a valuable resource for the early Israelites and their theology and rituals.Nissim Amzallag, Entangled Religions 12.2 (2021)
Further archaeological evidence from sites in the Negev like Tell el-Qudeirat and Horvat Haluqim, dating to the late 11th to early 10th century BC, could corroborate with the Biblical Israelite-Amalekite confrontations during the reigns of Saul and David. Hendrik J. Bruins of Ben Gurion University of the Negev discovered that their inhabitants were semi-nomadic who lived in tents, rode camels, traded copper, and worshipped gods at Matzevah. Oval fortresses were built during the relevant timeframe. Still, other scholars attribute these settlements to the Edomites or Simeonites.
Some commentators claim that this passage is a reference to the territory which was later inhabited by the Amalekites.Including Rashi C. Knight elaborates this concept by making a comparison: one might say "Caesar went into France", though Gaul only later became known as France.
John Gill believes the Amalekites of were equivalent to the Hamite-Arabian Amalekites described by Muslim scholars. He argues the Amalekites were always allied with the Canaanites who descended from Ham, were conquered by the Chedorlaomer, existed before the Edomite Amalekites thus affirming , and that the Edomites never rescued these Amalekites from Saul's campaigns due to inter-tribal feuds.
By the 19th century, many Western theologians believed that the nation of Amalek could have flourished before the time of Abraham. Matthew George Easton theorized that the Amalekites were not the descendants of Amalek by taking a literal approach to . However, the modern biblical scholar Gerald L. Mattingly uses textual analysis to glean that the use of Amalekite in is actually an anachronism, and in the early 19th century, Richard Watson enumerated several speculative reasons for the existence of a "more ancient Amalek" than Abraham.
In his exegesis of , concerning Balaam's utterance: "Amalek was the first one of the nations, but his end afterward will be even his perishing", Richard Watson attempts to associate this passage to the "first one of the nations" that developed post-Flood. According to Samuel Cox, the Amalekites were the "first" in their hostility toward the Israelites.
During the Purim, the Book of Esther is read in commemoration of the salvation of Jewish people from Haman, who plotted to kill all Persian Jews. It is customary for the audience to make noise and shout whenever "Haman" is mentioned, in order to desecrate his name, based on . It is also customary to recite on the Shabbat before Purim. This was because Haman was considered to be an Amalekite although this label is more likely to be symbolic rather than literal. Retrieved 13 February 2017 Some Iranophilic Jews interpreted Haman's Amalekite background as being anathema to both Jews and 'pure-blooded Iranians'.
In the past, some Jews associated Amalek with the Roman Empire and medieval Christians.
Rabbis generally agree that Amalek no longer exist as a unified nation, based on the argument that Sennacherib deported and mixed the nations, so it is no longer possible to determine who is an Amalekite.Eynei Kol Ḥai, 73, on Sanhedrin 96b. Also Minchat Chinuch, parshat Ki Tetze, mitzvah 434. Since the Holocaust, the phrase as it appears in is used as a call to witness. Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the Holocaust, features the phrase on a banner, and in letters between European Jews during the Holocaust, they plead with each other to "bear witness".
John Gill believes that Amalek is a type of antichrist that 'raises his hand against the throne of God, his tabernacle and his saints'. He believes the phrase "from generation to generation" in specifically refers to the Messianic Age, where Amalek and other antichristian states are exterminated by the Lamb. Likewise, Charles Ellicott notes that the Amalekites were collectively called 'the sinners' in , which was only used elsewhere for the Sodomites in .
Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch state that the Amalekites were extinct by the second half of Hezekiah's reign.
Professor Philip Jenkins notes that Christian extremists have historically labelled enemies such as Native Americans, Protestants, Catholics and Tutsis as Amalekites to justify their genocides. Jews and victims of the Crusades were also called Amalekites. Because of this, modern Christian scholars have re-examined the Biblical narratives that inspired these atrocities using philology, literary analysis, archaeology and historical evidence.
Ibn Khaldun believed that God ordered Talut, the king of Israel, to depose the Amalekites, which caused Haman's hostility to the Jews in the Book of Esther.
Adam J. Silverstein observes that most scholars who lived in the medieval Muslim world ignored the Book of Esther or they modified the details of it, despite their familiarity with the Iranian Jews. This was caused by their attempt to reconcile the Biblical Esther with the Quranic Haman, who was the antagonist of the The Exodus, and Persian mythological historical traditions. Notable exceptions include Ibn Khaldun, who affirmed the Amalekite origins of Haman and his Antisemitism vendetta.
Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Palestinians at the Cave of Patriarchs, compared Palestinians to Amalekites, seeing both as desert-dwelling "predators" of the Jewish people. Goldstein's mass shooting itself happened shortly after the reading of the Amalek narrative on Shabbat Zachor prior to Purim in 1994. Kahanism tended to see all enemies of Israel as modern-day Amalek, while other Jewish scholars see this as a distortion of the Torah.
During the 2014 Gaza war, a leading yeshiva identified Palestinians as the descendants of the ancient Amalekites and Philistines.
Multiple members of the Israeli Knesset, including Avihai Boaron, Amihai Eliyahu, Tally Gotliv, and Bezalel Smotrich, have invoked the commandment to wipe out the memory of Amalek in reference to the war in Gaza.
There have been examples of secular Zionists also using the Amalek metaphor. For example, Ariel Porat, the president of Tel Aviv University, cited the example of Amalek to justify Israel's attack on Gaza.
In March 2025, the Israeli High Court rejected allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza; one of the judges cited the "sacred war" ( milkhemet mitzvah) against Amalek in his opinion.
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