In Search of Amalek The Pursuit of an Historical Referent in 1 Sam 30

The role of the Amalekites in the account of David’s retaliatory raid after the sack of Ziklag (1 Sam 30) has raised surprisingly few questions in biblical research. Even though opinions greatly differ on the composition’s unity, original context, provenance, and relation to 1 Sam 15, very few have raised any doubts regarding the historicity of the Amalekites themselves,¹ and many are convinced that even if the narrative does not reflect the time of David, it does reflect the realia of raids by camel-riding nomadic plunderers. Here I will explore the possibility that the historical referent of Amalek is not an Iron Age nomadic group, but rather a cypher for Idumea and its inhabitants, and that the animosity towards Amalek in biblical texts is related to the hostile attitude towards Edom in the Prophets and Psalms (e.g., Isa 34:5-6; 63:1; Ezek 25:12-14; 35:2- 9; Mal 1:3-4; Ps 137:7-9; Lam 4:21). Thus, I will suggest that biblical Amalek is not a mythic arch-enemy or a specific tribe of nomadic raiders, which has a specific referent rooted in the Persian and Hellenistic period - but a referent that was encoded and retrojected onto the distant past.