So what do you make of the story in
1 Samuel 15 about the slaughter of the Amakelites? Do you reject this part of the Bible as factually true?
What do you think?
About the story? A few things.
One thing I note is that the central theme of the story is obedience to God, not slaughter. The genocide itself is dealt with in an almost matter-of-fact way, like it's taken as a given or it wasn't considered to be a controversial detail.
There are a few different ways of approaching it that immediately come to mind:
- face value as a literal account of a historical event, albeit with a "moral" message attached to it. In this interpretation, God is a monster.
- an embellishment of actual history (or at least folklore) with religious messages: the Israelites wiped out the Amakelites...
because they were commanded to do so by God. Following this, Saul was de-throned...
because he disobeyed God.
- a fable intended for moral or religious instruction rather than as a historical account. Even in this interpretation, I still find the message disagreable:
obey God's commands without question, even if rational thinking suggests some other course of action. I also have major problems with the fact that the genocide itself doesn't factor into the moral message - no issue is taken with it at all.