Friday, October 9, 2026 · Week of Pentecost 19
Exodus 17:8–16
8 Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim.
9 Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some men for us and go out; fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.”
10 So Joshua did as Moses told him and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. 11 Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. 12 But Moses’s hands grew heavy, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on either side, so his hands were steady until the sun set. 13 And Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the sword.
14 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this as a remembrance in a book and recite it in the hearing of Joshua: I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.”
15 And Moses built an altar and called it, The Lord is my banner.
16 He said, “A hand upon the banner of the Lord! The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.”
Notes
Yesterday's reading ended with the people asking, "Is the Lord among us or not?" (17:7). The next verse is "Then Amalek came." Until now, Israel hasn't fought anybody. God led them the long way around so they wouldn't see war and run back to Egypt (13:17), and at the sea Moses told them, "The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still" (14:14). Here, for the first time, Israel goes out with swords. Joshua walks onstage with no introduction (we don't get his father's name until 33:11), and he's already in command. His name, Yehoshua, means "the Lord saves." In Greek it becomes Iēsous, the same name the New Testament gives Jesus.
The whole episode hangs on one Hebrew word, yad, "hand," which shows up seven times in nine verses. The staff of God is "in my hand" (verse 9). Moses raises his hand and lowers his hand (verse 11). His hands grow heavy, Aaron and Hur hold up his hands, and his hands stay steady (verse 12). Number seven is the strange "hand upon the banner" in verse 16. "Heavy" is kevedim, from the same root as Pharaoh's heavy, hardened heart (7:14), and as Moses' excuse at the bush, which in Hebrew reads, "I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue" (4:10). The first time Moses was too heavy for the job, God sent Aaron to speak for him. This time Aaron and Hur hold his heavy arms up. And "steady" is emunah, faithfulness, from the root that gives us "amen." Here, faithfulness looks like two friends propping up an eighty-year-old's arms on a rock until sunset (7:7).
So how did a raised hand win a battle? Like the quail and the manna on Wednesday, the story can be read two ways. On a naturalistic reading, Moses is a general on a hilltop holding the staff up like a standard. The troops in the valley look up, see it, and rally, and when his arms sag, they lose heart. Verse 15 leans that direction: Moses names the altar YHWH nissi, "the Lord is my banner." A nes is a pole or standard lifted high where everyone can see it.
On a supernatural reading, power flows through the raised staff the way it did at the sea, when God told Moses to lift up his staff and stretch out his hand (14:16). The verb for "lift" there, rum, is the same one used for Moses raising his hand here. The rabbis offered a third reading. The Mishnah asks, "Did the hands of Moses make war or break war?" Its answer: as long as Israel looked upward and turned their hearts to their Father in heaven, they prevailed, and when they didn't, they fell (Rosh Hashanah 3:8). Then it sets our story beside the bronze serpent Moses put on a nes in Numbers 21:8. The serpent didn't heal anybody either. Looking up did. Jesus reaches for that same pole: "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up" (John 3:14).
Which brings us to Amalek. Amalek is family, Esau's grandson (Genesis 36:12). Deuteronomy remembers what he did: "he attacked you on the way, when you were faint and weary, and struck down all who lagged behind you" (Deuteronomy 25:18). Amalek went after the stragglers, the people too tired to keep up. God tells Moses to write it down, the first time in the Bible anyone is told to write anything, and what Moses writes is a promise to "utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven." Writing it down, ironically, guarantees we're still reading about Amalek.
Verse 16 promises war "from generation to generation," and that war comes due in 1 Samuel 15, where Saul is ordered to "kill both man and woman, child and infant." That's a command to commit genocide, and people have reached for the name Amalek to justify killing their enemies, children included, long after the Bible closed. But Deuteronomy's charge against Amalek was that he killed the people at the back of the line. A war on infants does the same thing.
Questions for reflection
Verse 11 never explains how a raised hand turned the battle. Was it a signal to the troops, a channel of God's power, or a people learning to look up? What changes depending on the reading you choose?
Deuteronomy remembers Amalek for attacking the faint and weary at the back of the line. Who is at the back of the line where you live, and who is watching out for them?
