The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning

by Jeremy Lent

Perhaps even more disturbing than the glorification of massacres is the requirement that God's commandments must be carried out unfalteringly, regardless of how inhumane they appear. A particularly sinister episode in the book of Samuel drives this point home. The Israelite king, Saul, is told by Yahweh to conduct the by-now-familiar genocidal campaign against the Amalekites. Saul does as commanded, except that, having slaughtered the entire population, he keeps the king of the Amalekites, Agag, alive and saves the best of the sheep and cattle to sacrifice to his Lord. Yahweh is furious at even this slight disobedience and sends his prophet, Samuel, to tell Saul he is now rejected by Yahweh as king of Israel. Saul immediately tries to make amends. He calls for Agag to be brought to him and puts him to death right there, abjectly following Yahweh's command. It is worth recalling that, during the Nuremberg trials, the claim of “just following orders” became notorious as an insufficient defense against the charge of mass murder. It is a grim irony of history that the first exemplar of genocide carried out in the name of ideology came from the holy book of the Jewish faith, the very people that the Nazis tried to wipe out with their racist ideology.12