The Battle With Amalek

Parshat Beshalach

by Rabbi Avi Billet

The battle is waged against Amalek, and as it finishes, we are told – as it is most often translated – "Yehoshua weakened Amalek and his people with the sword." (Shmot 17:13) The Torah's word for "weakened" is "Vayachalosh," and as it turns out, its translation is not so clear.

            

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch takes the "weakening" as a reminder that the defeat of Amalek will only come at the end of days. Israel (as a people) is not yet mature, he argues, and it is Amalek's existence as an adversary and a contrast that is necessary for Israel's development.

           

The Mechilta records three opinions as what happened to Amalek on this battlefield: they were judged with mercy, they lost based on a divine word, they fell by the sword.

            

The Pesikta similarly has a few suggestions: they plowed through Amalek (based on the "l" of VaychaLosh being interchangeable with an "r" – "Vayachrosh"), he struck them as how one destroys mice through squashing them, or Yehoshua had the Amalekites decapitated.

            

The Midrash Sechel Tov elaborates on this last suggestion saying Yehoshua did not mutilate their bodies (see R Chaim Paltiel and Daat Zekenim below), but judged them to receive an honorable death – quick and instant death through decapitation.

            

How could such a judgment be considered a weakening? The Targum Yonatan says the punishment was on a limited scale – only the greatest of their warriors met their ends this way (see Rashi too). This explains how they were weakened – their best soldiers perished, but not the regular rank-n-filers (Ta"z).

            

There is another line of thinking recorded by a number of commentaries, based in the Midrash.

            

The Amalekites were able, through necromancy, to see which of their soldiers were not destined to die at the sword during the coming year. These men were placed as the front-line soldiers, almost as an invincible army. Nonetheless, Yehoshua's army weakened them with the sword through injuries, even though they could not kill them. (Chizkuni, Daat Zekenim, R Chaim Paltiel, etc)

           

Chizkuni (and R Chaim Paltiel) records a different opinion, based on similar word in Iyov 14:10, that Vayachalosh means many Amalekites did in fact die in battle.

            

However, R Chaim Paltiel raises another Midrashic approach to this battle, that Yehoshua ordered for the Roshei Eivarim, the tips of the organs, to be removed, thus weakening them. The Sifra (Tazria 1) notes that there are 24 Roshei Eivarim – 10 fingers, 10 toes, the ears, the nose, the male organ and the nipples.

If all the Roshei Eivarim were removed, that is not only a weakening, that is a mutilation! So I wonder if that is really what it means. The Daat Zekenim claims it wasn't "all" of the Roshei Eivarim – just the hands and the feet. We are grateful for the clarification.

Of course there are others, such as one opinion quoted in the Hadar Zekenim anthology, who say that the allusion of "Vaychalosh" refers to death, plain and simple.

Rabbenu Bachaye takes the word to be understood in an out-of-worldly sense, that there was something going on in the stars and between the heavenly representatives of Amalek and Yisrael.

I raise all of these possibilities for a number of reasons.

First, as a reminder that there's a world of interpretation out there, and while everyone has an opinion, no one can be absolutely correct when it comes to certain narratives.

Second, the rules of the battlefield are not pretty. It is very difficult to judge military leaders for certain decisions made in the heat of a battle, when their soldiers' lives are on the line and there is chaos and lack of clarity all around.

Third, whatever Yehoshua did to "weaken them" – whether killing the best soldiers, the entire attacking band of Amalekites (surely the entire nation of Amalek was not at hand for this attack), or just mutilating them, Amalek was weakened enough that we don't see them attack the Israelites for decades – and not at all in the book of Yehoshua. Of course, we understand that whatever he did was by divine command.

Sometimes merely disarming enemies is not enough. Something needs to be done to set them back decades so that our People can live in peace for a generation or two, if not longer.

I don't take from this story that enemies should be killed or mutilated. But perhaps a strategy could be employed that considers how to weaken a fighting spirit – perhaps a push to educate or to employ or to give people a sense of purpose in life beyond having nothing better to do than fight the "Israelis" or "the Jews."

            
The power struggles that pervade in the Middle East, as well as certain US politicians' egotistical notion that they have the solution, only add to the fire that will never allow for peace in the region unless the focus changes to bettering the lives of a people through education and opportunity in place of blaming others for all of the woes that have not subsided or changed (in some cases) for generations.