Biblion Bible Commentary
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Amalek, and Hands Held Up
Exodus 17:8-16
8 Then Amalek came and fought with Israel in Rephidim. · WEB
The first battle is won on a hilltop rather than in the valley, and by three men rather than one.
Then Amalek came and fought with Israel in Rephidim Exodus 17:8.
The first armed attack on the new nation, and it comes without a stated cause. Amalek were descendants of Esau Genesis 36:12, distant relatives, and the account elsewhere records that they struck the exhausted at the rear of the column, all who were feeble behind you, when you were faint and weary Deuteronomy 25:18. That detail explains the severity of the sentence at the end of this chapter.
Moses said to Joshua, "Choose men for us, and go out to fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with God's rod in my hand" Exodus 17:9.
Joshua enters the book here, without introduction, and is handed a command. One man fights in the valley, another stands on the hill, and neither is described as the more important.
When Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed. When he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed Exodus 17:11.
The correlation is exact and is meant to be seen from below. There is nothing in a raised arm that affects a battle; what the arrangement demonstrates is where the outcome is actually being decided, and it does so in a form the whole army can watch. The men in the valley fought hard and their fortunes rose and fell with a gesture on a hilltop.
But Moses' hands were heavy; so they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side. His hands were steady until sunset Exodus 17:12.
The most human sentence in the chapter. The man on the hill is eighty years old and his arms give out, and the solution is not additional strength but two other people. Aaron and Hur do nothing heroic; they hold up someone else's hands for several hours, which is tedious, unrecorded work of the kind that decides outcomes. The victory is credited to Joshua's sword in the next verse, and it belonged as much to the two men nobody was watching.
Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under the sky Exodus 17:14.
The first explicit command in Scripture to write something down, and the thing to be recorded is a sentence of judgment on a people who attacked the weak. It is delivered to Joshua as well, which is to say to the next generation of leadership; the account of the sentence outlives everyone present.
Moses built an altar, and called its name "Yahweh our Banner" Exodus 17:15.
A banner is what an army rallies to and what it is identified by. The name given to the altar is not a claim about the fighting; it is a claim about whose standard the fighting was done under, made on the day of the first victory, in a place where the same people had accused God of bringing them out to die.
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