# Agag King of the Amalekites in the time of [Saul](/codex/saul/). In [1 Samuel 15](/codex/1-samuel-15/), Saul is sent to carry out judgment on Amalek, defeats them, and then spares Agag and the best of the livestock against the command. The prophet [Samuel](/codex/samuel/) rebukes Saul, announces that God has rejected him as king, and executes Agag himself at Gilgal. Centuries later, the book of Esther introduces its villain as *"Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite"* ([Esther 3:1](/codex/esther-3-1/), ASV), the man who plots to destroy every Jew in the Persian empire. Agag therefore sits at the center of the Amalekite genocide objection and at one end of a long biblical thread. ## The name Agag appears twice in the Old Testament as a king. Balaam's oracle in Numbers 24:7 already says of Israel, *"his king shall be higher than Agag"* (ASV), generations before Saul. Many commentators take this to mean that Agag was a recurring royal name or title among the Amalekites, as Pharaoh was in Egypt, rather than a single man's name. The text does not say so directly, and the codex leaves the point open. ## The story in [1 Samuel 15](/codex/1-samuel-15/) **The command.** Through Samuel, the LORD tells Saul: *"I have marked that which Amalek did to Israel, how he set himself against him in the way, when he came up out of Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have"* ([1 Samuel 15:2-3](/codex/1-samuel-15-2-3/), ASV). The ground is the unprovoked attack on Israel's stragglers in the wilderness ([Exodus 17:8-16](/codex/exodus-17-8-16/); [Deuteronomy 25:17-19](/codex/deuteronomy-25-17-19/)). **The escape clause.** Before the battle Saul tells the Kenites, who lived among the Amalekites, to leave, *"for ye showed kindness to all the children of Israel"* ([1 Samuel 15:6](/codex/1-samuel-15-6/), ASV). **The disobedience.** *"He took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive ... But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen ... and would not utterly destroy them"* ([1 Samuel 15:8-9](/codex/1-samuel-15-8-9/), ASV). Saul then sets up a monument to himself at Carmel and tells Samuel he has obeyed, while the bleating of the sheep says otherwise. **The verdict.** Samuel answers that *"to obey is better than sacrifice"* and that *"because thou hast rejected the word of Jehovah, he hath also rejected thee from being king"* ([1 Samuel 15:22-23](/codex/1-samuel-15-22-23/), ASV). **The execution.** *"Then said Samuel, Bring ye hither to me Agag the king of the Amalekites. And Agag came unto him cheerfully. And Agag said, Surely the bitterness of death is past. And Samuel said, As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before Jehovah in Gilgal"* ([1 Samuel 15:32-33](/codex/1-samuel-15-32-33/), ASV). Two details in that last scene matter: - **How Agag came is uncertain.** The ASV and WEB have "cheerfully"; the KJV has "delicately." Translators differ over a rare Hebrew word, and the sense may be confidence or may be hesitation. Either way, Agag believed the danger had passed. - **Samuel's sentence is stated as justice for Agag's own deeds.** *"As thy sword hath made women childless"* frames the execution as recompense for what Agag had done as a raiding king, not as punishment for being born an Amalekite. ## Agag and Haman the Agagite The book of Esther introduces Haman as *"the Agagite"* ([Esther 3:1](/codex/esther-3-1/)) and later as *"the enemy of all the Jews"* who *"had plotted against the Jews to destroy them"* (Esther 9:24, ASV). His opponent is Mordecai, *"the son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, a Benjamite"* (Esther 2:5, ASV). Saul was also a Benjamite and the son of a man named Kish (1 Samuel 9:1-2). The narrative sets up a rematch. A descendant of the house of Kish faces a descendant of Agag, and this time the Benjamite does not spare the enemy's line. The Jews kill Haman's ten sons but, Esther notes, *"on the spoil they laid not their hand"* (Esther 9:10, ASV), the very thing Saul failed to refrain from in 1 Samuel 15. The Jewish historian [Josephus](/codex/josephus/) read "Agagite" this way, calling Haman an Amalekite by birth (*Antiquities* 11.209). Some interpreters take the label as symbolic, marking Haman as heir to Amalek's hostility rather than a literal descendant, and the Greek text of Esther varies in what it calls him. The literary link holds on either reading. ## Apologetic relevance **The Amalekite genocide objection.** Critics cite [1 Samuel 15](/codex/1-samuel-15/) as a divinely commanded genocide. The codex's answer is at [Amalekite Genocide Objection Defeater](/codex/amalekite-genocide-objection-defeater/). Agag figures in it in three ways: 1. **The text frames the judgment around deeds.** The command is grounded in Amalek's attack on the weak (15:2), and Samuel's words to Agag tie his death to his own violence (15:33). 2. **The totalizing language is not a casualty count.** Agag is taken alive (15:8), and Amalekites are raiding again in [1 Samuel 30:1-2](/codex/1-samuel-30-1-2/). The "man and woman, infant and suckling" formula reads as the stock language of the ban, discussed at [Canaanite Conquest and Herem](/codex/canaanite-conquest-and-herem/) and [Prophetic Mediation and Wartime Rhetoric](/codex/prophetic-mediation-and-wartime-rhetoric/). 3. **The cost of partial obedience.** On the defeater's reading, sparing Agag's royal line is exactly what leads, within the canon, to Haman's attempt to exterminate the Jews of Persia. The objector's "more humane" alternative is the one the narrative shows producing a later attempted genocide. **Honest limits.** Whether Haman was literally Agag's descendant cannot be proven from outside the Bible, and the codex does not rest the case on it. The argument from Agag to Haman is an argument about how the canon itself reads the episode, not an independent historical proof. **Obedience and kingship.** The Agag episode is the decisive failure of Saul's reign, the moment the kingdom passes in principle to [David](/codex/david/) ([1 Samuel 16](/codex/1-samuel-16/) follows directly). It is also the setting of Samuel's line that obedience outranks sacrifice, a theme the prophets and Jesus repeat. ## See also - [Samuel](/codex/samuel/), the prophet who delivered the command and executed Agag - [Saul](/codex/saul/), the king who spared Agag and lost the kingdom for it - [David](/codex/david/), anointed in the chapter after Saul's rejection - [Amalekite Genocide Objection Defeater](/codex/amalekite-genocide-objection-defeater/), the debate-prep answer to the objection built on 1 Samuel 15 - [Prophetic Mediation and Wartime Rhetoric](/codex/prophetic-mediation-and-wartime-rhetoric/), whether Samuel's command used stock war idiom - [Canaanite Conquest and Herem](/codex/canaanite-conquest-and-herem/), the meaning of the ban and its language - [Canaanite Conquest Objection Defeater](/codex/canaanite-conquest-objection-defeater/), the conquest-wide sibling defeater - [Esther](/codex/esther/), the book in which Haman the Agagite appears - [Josephus](/codex/josephus/), who identified Haman as an Amalekite - [Exodus 17:8-16](/codex/exodus-17-8-16/), Amalek's attack in the wilderness
## Common questions this page answers **Q: Who was Agag in the Bible?** Agag was the king of the Amalekites in the time of Saul. In 1 Samuel 15, Saul defeated the Amalekites but spared Agag and the best of their livestock against God's command. The prophet Samuel rebuked Saul, announced that God had rejected him as king, and executed Agag at Gilgal. **Q: Why did Samuel kill Agag?** Saul had been told to carry out judgment on Amalek and had spared their king. Samuel carried out the sentence himself and stated its ground: "As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women" (1 Samuel 15:33, ASV). The execution is framed as recompense for Agag's own violence as a raiding king. **Q: Is Haman in the book of Esther a descendant of Agag?** Esther calls Haman "the Agagite" (Esther 3:1), and the Jewish historian Josephus called him an Amalekite by birth. The book sets him against Mordecai, a Benjamite descended from a man named Kish, which echoes Saul, son of Kish. Some interpreters read "Agagite" as a symbolic label for an enemy of Israel rather than literal descent, but the link to Agag is clearly intended. **Q: Doesn't the survival of Agag and later Amalekites prove the command in 1 Samuel 15 was not literal?** It shows the "utterly destroy ... man and woman, infant and suckling" language works as the stock formula of the ban rather than a literal casualty count, since Agag was taken alive and Amalekites raid Ziklag later in 1 Samuel 30. The codex treats this at the Amalekite Genocide Objection Defeater and at the hub on the conquest and the ban.