Verified answer

Kill one person, and you're a murderer. Kill millions, and you're a leader. Kill almost everybody, and you're God.

As you've implied, God's an omnipotent jerk who can do whatever He wants. You got a problem with that?

Reading earlier, the Amalekites were equivalent of Nazis. They themselves tried to genocide the Jews.

Jews were ordered to kill them all. But couldn't bring themselves to.

As a result, it's said that they continue to exist & rise up once in a while to try to wipe out Jews...though we don't know who specifically is from that group until they do try. This last bit is "story", mythology. However, the point is, they were blood thirsty murdering band that had proven themselves already.

Also the book is written in hyperboli style of the day. It's best to read it Jewish style for levels of meaning, not literally as though you're supposed to revere every action in it. In Judaism other lines from God about sparing a city if there is even a single good soul in it, is taken into account. So it becomes about looking for meanings between the lines when contrasting the different storylines...

Because the victors write the history. If Hitler had won we'd be celebrating "Final Solution Day" every year. Since the Jews won (or, rather, made up a story that they fought and won), they wrote that they were justified. The whole OT is merely justification stories - they kill a people, but it's justified for this or that reason. (Like the whole Exodus thing - it was the lower class Caananites rising up against the upper class Caananites, but Moses and an escape from Egypt makes for a better story.)

Hitler tried to copy the Young Turks & the Armenian Genocide. Genocide is an eastern thing that should never be confused with the west.

It's not the same. The Jews were innocent. The Amalekites deserved it.

Because God is Creator He also has the prerogative to judge. This is analogous to our experience. Society takes it upon itself to judge the criminal and punish him if he supercedes the "just" laws that govern the society, in order to prevent chaos and suffering. If that is true of human society (one man to another), it is all the more of God, because He is ontologically above us (Creator and created).

So it is perfectly sensible and moral to posit (apart from the data of revelation) a notion of God judging both individuals and nations. God's omniscience is such that He can determine if an entire nation has gone bad ("beyond repair," so to speak) and should be punished. And He did so. Now, even in a wicked nation there may be individuals who are exceptions to the rule. So some innocent people will be killed. But this is like our human experience as well. In wartime, we go to war against an entire nation. In so doing, even if it is unintentional, some innocent non-combatants will be killed.

But it's also different in God's case because He judged nations in part in order to prevent their idolatry and other sins to infiltrate Jewish (i.e., true) religion. He also judged Israel at various times (lest He be accused of being unfair). In any event, it is not true that nations or individuals were punished because of what their ancestors did. There is a sense of corporate punishment, just described, and it is also true that the entire human race is a fallen race. We all deserve punishment for that fact alone, and God would be perfectly just to wipe us all out the next second. No one could hold it against Him.

He decides to be merciful and grant us grace to do better, but He is under no obligation to do so, anymore than the governor is obliged to pardon convicted criminals. Again, the societal analogy is perfectly apt. If someone rebels at every turn against every societal norm and law and appropriate behavior and so forth, is society to be blamed? Say someone grows up thinking that serial rape is fine and dandy and shouldn't be prevented at all. So he goes and does this. Eventually, the legal system catches up with him and he gets his punishment. He rebelled against what most people think is wrong, and more than deserved his punishment.

We don't say that there should be no punishment. We don't blame society for his suffering in prison. We don't deny that society has a right to judge such persons. So if mere human beings can judge each other, why cannot God judge His creation, and (particularly) those of His creation that have rebelled against Him at every turn? What is so incomprehensible about that? One may not believe it, but there is no radical incoherence or inconsistency or monstrous injustice or immorality in this Christian (and Jewish) viewpoint (which is what is always claimed by the critics).

see also http://www.rationalchristianity.net/amalekites.htm...

http://www.rationalchristianity.net/genocide.html

God is a God of love and justice. God hates sin and intervenes at times then as He does still today. We humans do not have the mind of God who far surpasses us. The Amalekites was a pagan nation. God in His Omnipotence knows what needs to be done, whether mankind understands His ways or even agrees with them. You need to read more than just a verse. God, who is creator is also judge...In Him I will always trust and love.

Because it was in retaliation for how the Amalekites mistreated the Hebrews.

Hitler had no such excuse.

Silley Mackey, Hitler was a christian, and he did in god's name because of that verse actually, ironic huh?

If you can create it I guess you are free to destroy it. Hitler did not create the Jews. God created the Amalekites.

If God considered the wickedness of the Amalekites worthy of capital punishment, who are you or I to argue with Him?