But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them: but every thing that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly.
And of the fatlings, х wªhamishniym (H4932)]. This plural substantive (cf. 2 Samuel 6:13), which in the singular denotes second rank, second place, is used apparently in this passage to indicate cattle of a second quality; perhaps lambs of the second birth - i:e., autumnal lambs, and therefore weaker sad less valuable (Gesenius). Bochart ('Hierozoicon') thinks that it means full-grown cattle. [The Septuagint has: toon edesmatoon, cattle fit for food]. Our translators have evidently followed the Septuagint By this willful and partial obedience to a positive command, complying with it in some parts and violating it in others, as suited his own taste, humour, or cupidity, Saul showed his selfish arbitrary temper and love of despotic power, and consequently his utter unfitness to perform the duties of a delegated king in Israel. In fact, he was guilty of the very sin of Achan, in secreting, through covetousness, "the accursed thing" (Joshua 7:20-21).
The Amalekites were a horde of fierce, restless, incorrigible marauders, who lived by plunder; and, joining with the remnant of the ancient Rephaim and their Anakim kindred, appeared as open hereditary enemies of Israel. It was a political measure, therefore, essential to the peace of the Jewish kingdom, that such dangerous neighbours should be extirpated; and hence, reasons of present policy, enforced by the memory of early national wrongs, prompted this hostile expedition against them in the reign of Saul. The stern decree or law for the utter extermination of this people has frequently drawn down bitter reproaches upon the Hebrew legislator. But considering the unprovoked and oft-repeated attacks they made upon Israel, and the constant perils to which the inhabitants in the southern parts of the kingdom were exposed-of the loss of their property, and the abduction of their young women for slaves by the predatory incursions of the Amalekites-prudence and self-defense required that this tribe of lawless banditti should be swept away.
Their lawless character may be gathered from many incidents and allusions in Scripture (cf. Exodus 17:8-16; Numbers 14:45; Judges 6:3-6; Psalms 83:7), and from the most barbarous of all cruel plots, that of Haman the Agagite (Esther 3:1-15). But as the ban against them was registered so early, and in terms of such unrelenting severity, in the divinely-authorized statute book of Moses, there must have been other reasons for this stern procedure, of which we have not been informed (see the note at Deuteronomy 25:17-19). 'If God foresaw that the safety of the chosen people depended upon it, the order to exterminate the Amalekites was wisely and justly given; and if the people were ripe for that vengeance With which they had been threatened above 400 years before, and which had been so long mercifully delayed by the patience of Almighty God, I presume it was no injustice in Him who best knows the proper seasons of His own conduct, and is the beet judge of the means and instruments to execute His own purposes, to put the sword of justice into his (Saul's) hands, and command him to cut off those whom He thought fit to make examples of, for the numerous vices, oppressions, and cruelties of which He knew them to be guilty. Samuel terms them "those sinners," the Amalekites, to denote that even at that time they were a very wicked people, that they themselves were ripe for the judgments of the Almighty, and that they were punished for their own sins, though mention is made of the evil conduct of their ancestors; and it had been long predicted that Amalek should be destroyed,' (Chandler's 'Life of David,' vol.
i., b. 1:, ch. 4:: see further, Butler's 'Analogy,' part 2:, ch. 3:)