Remembering Amalek Twice
Contends that the commands to remember Amalek in Exodus and Deuteronomy respond to two distinct clashes rather than a single one, since Deuteronomy omits Rephidim, Joshua, and the divine oath while describing an attack on the exhausted, which better matches the crushing Israelite defeat recorded in Numbers and explains the delayed timetable for settling accounts.
This paper proposes to show that the two exhortations in Scripture (Exodus and Deuteronomy) concerning Amalek are based on two separate episodes. This is a departure from the traditional view that Deuteronomy is a replication or extension of Exodus.
Langner presses on the verb used at Rephidim, which conveys weakening rather than annihilation, and on the absence of any victory song afterward, to show that the first encounter left Amalek intact. He then lists what Deuteronomy leaves out and what it adds, concluding that its picture of a strike against the faint and weary points elsewhere. The candidate he proposes is the rout in Numbers, so severe that entry into Canaan was postponed for decades. Two encounters, he argues, account for two differently framed obligations, one immediate and generational, the other deferred until Israel is secure.
Allan M. Langner was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1948. He was Rabbi of Congregation Beth-El, Mt. Royal, Quebec, Canada, for 40 years, and is now Rabbi Emeritus.
Cite this article
Allan M. Langner. "Remembering Amalek Twice." Jewish Bible Quarterly 36, no. 4 (October – December 2008): 251–253.
Allan M. Langner. "Remembering Amalek Twice." Jewish Bible Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 4, 2008, pp. 251–253.