top of page

Amalek

By George Elder, 1/16/25


When Israel’s military response to Hamas’ exceptional brutality became exceptional itself, I began to wonder if Edward Edinger’s interest in the biblical figure of Amalek might be relevant. He’d written in a few places (The Bible and the Psyche, Ego and Self) that he found the essay, “Amalek: The Eternal Adversary,” by Myron Gubitz, an excellent contribution to Jungian thought. It was written in 1977 for the journal, Psychological Perspectives (vol. 8, no. 1).


Then I read the following from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the Israeli people:


They are committed to completely eliminating this evil from the world . . . you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.” (Mother Jones, November 3, 2023)


It was clear that Edinger’s and Gubitz’s interest would throw some psychological light on the Hamas-Israeli War—at least, on the Israeli side.


The Scripture

So who is Amalek? We learn of him and his nomadic tribe, the Amalekites, shortly after the  Exodus, as Moses exhorts his followers in the desert:


Remember how Amalek treated you when you were on your way out of Egypt. He met you on your way and, after you had gone by, he fell on you from the rear and cut off the stragglers; when you were faint and weary he had no fear of God. When Yahweh your God has granted you peace from all the enemies surrounding you in the land Yahweh your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you are to blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget. (Deuteronomy 25.17-19)


Netanyahu has not forgotten.


Sometime later during the Wandering, the Amalekites attacked again:


The Amalekites came and attacked Israel at Rephidim. Moses said to Joshua, “Pick out men for yourself, and tomorrow morning march out to engage Amalek. I, meanwhile, will stand on the hilltop, the staff of God in my hand.” (Exodus 17.8-16)


There follows the famous scene of Moses holding high this staff all day—giving the victory—while men hold up his weary arms.


Then, Yahweh himself spoke to Moses:


“Write this action down in a book to keep the memory of it, and say in Joshua’s hearing that I shall wipe out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” And Moses observed, “Yahweh is at war with Amalek from age to age!”


It was this scripture that prompted Gubitz to call Amalek the “eternal adversary.”


Indeed, he keeps reappearing. Centuries later, Saul—Israel’s first king in the Promised Land—heard the following divine command through the prophet Samuel:


Thus speaks Yahweh Sabaoth, “I will repay what Amalek did to Israel when they opposed them on the road by which they came up out of Egypt. Now, go and strike down Amalek; put him under the ban with all that he possesses. Do not spare him, but kill man and woman, babe and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” (1 Samuel 15.1-35)


The Amalekites are to be conquered exceptionally, put under the “ban” of Holy War and destroyed utterly.


Saul succeeds at war yet mercifully spares Agag, their king at the time, and spares some of their best livestock for sacrifice. But the Warrior God of Israel detects only disobedience. And the "spirit of Yahweh” that had once seized this great king before battle so that “his fury was stirred to fierce flame” departed. In its place “an evil spirit from Yahweh filled him with terror”—bringing about melancholy, military defeat, and suicide. The more pious and obedient Samuel, on the other hand, “butchered Agag before Yahweh.”


Although canonical, the Book of Esther is a historical novel. It is set in the Persian Empire of the 5th century BCE, during the reign of Ahasueras—when Esther was his queen. She had not told him she was a Jew, but Haman—second in command—discovered it when her cousin Mordecai refused to bow down to him. His pride offended, Haman arranged to have all the Jews living in Persia condemned to death as a threat to order. Esther, however, cleverly arranged to have the vizier killed instead, along with his ten sons and 75,000 enemies of the Jews throughout the provinces.


What a great vindictive turn of events! It is celebrated in Judaism every year at the festival of Purim when Haman is noisily vilified as the very personification of Evil. But, then, Haman was the “son of Hammedatha, from the land of Agag,” i.e., a distant descendant of the Amalekite whom Saul had misguidedly spared. (Esther 3.1) This means that king Agag had somehow sired a son before Samuel killed him.


A Modern Leap

As a boy, Gubitz heard his rabbi claim in synagogue that if Israel’s king Saul had not been so lenient, there would have been no Hitler. Today, he could hear there would be no Hamas.


A rabbi has said online, while noting the uncanny alliteration and similarity of two-syllable names for evil:


“We need all Jews and as many non-Jews as possible to understand that the evil of Amalek, Haman, Hitler, and Hamas must be uprooted from their core”—“we must eradicate evil so that it does not repeat itself.” 


The Psychology

We know from previous Posts that Evil cannot be uprooted; and it will repeat. That is because—like Good—Evil is built into the psyche as an archetype. Together, they are a pair of Opposites vying for supremacy within each of us with only a small conscious ego able to affect how they manifest by making ethical decisions.


Obviously, the more developed or conscious that ego, the better one’s chances for making the proper decisions and for living well.


It is dangerous, therefore, to confuse the practical difficulty of getting rid of the evil of Hamas with the impossibility of getting rid of Evil itself. For a leader like Netanyahu, the danger is inflation, i.e., identifying with the archetype of Good. Yes, that supplies extraordinary energy and confidence short-term. But the feeling of “self-righteousness” prevents one from self-criticism, from considering the criticism of others, and from accepting some compromise to bring the horror of war to an end.


It is dangerous, also, to take scripture literally. “Remembering Amalek” as if history—for which there is scant archaeological evidence—and even the “Exodus” as if it occurred as in the Bible (or the movie) justifies killing and destruction as a Holy War ordained by God. That dampens remorse. It does not even comport with the Bible’s own lex talionis (“law of retribution”). We read in Deuteronomy 19.21: “Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot”—that has long been understood by rabbinic Judaism to mean, “only an eye for an eye,” no more.


Gubitz agrees that: “The progression of this myth cycle suggests that the memory of Amalek cannot be wiped out root and branch; that this is an impossible, a superhuman task . . . .” (56) Furthermore, he tells us that Amalek is biblically the grandson of Esau (Genesis 36.9-12):


Thus the Amalek cycle has its root in the saga of the ill-matched twins Jacob and Esau. According to Jewish legend, Esau was never truly reconciled with Jacob [for stealing his birthright] but always harbored thoughts of vengeance against him; unable to carry out his plans himself, he urged his eldest son Eliphaz to do so. But Eliphaz was dissuaded by his concubine Timna, and so the legacy of hatred and revenge passed to their child Amalek who eventually became the chief of a tribe bearing his name. (42)


Now we are for certain outside history and in the realm of myth. This account introduces the motif of the “hostile brothers” found universally in sacred literature.


Edinger says the motif expresses symbolically how the individual psyche develops: “The basic idea is that the ego establishes its unique, autonomous existence by a denial and dissociation of the shadow.” (The Bible and the Psyche, 36) As the ego matures, however, it has the opportunity to “reconcile” with the shadow by acknowledging its existence and, then, by integrating into everyday life some of its life-enhancing attributes.


Since groups are made of many individuals, group psychology reflects the same dynamic—i.e, families and nations have shadows, too. Thus, from a Jungian point of view, it is unfortunate that Jewish legend claims that “Esau was never truly reconciled with Jacob.” That indicates a failure to integrate shadow contents.


On the other hand, the Bible says they were reconciled. In Genesis 33, Jacob “wrestles with God”—one of the greatest images in the history of religion—and then seeks his brother’s forgiveness by sending his family and many gifts in advance of a meeting:


He himself went ahead of them and bowed to the ground seven times before going up to his brother. But Esau ran to meet him, took him in his arms and held him close and wept. (3-4)


That is another great image.


It is a symbol of the possibility that Hamas—or at least the Palestinian people—and Israel can free themselves from being “seized” by the archetypes of Good and Evil and realize their humanity. They might see that they are “brothers” and fall in each other’s arms and weep.



Featured Post
bottom of page