Was The Amalekite Slaughter Immoral?

Answering A Clip from the Alex O'Connor and Dinesh D'Souza Debate

Alex O’Connor, also known as The Cosmic Skeptic, held Dinesh D’Souza’s feet to the fire in a recent debate in regard to the Amalekite slaughter in the Bible. He also held William Lane Craig’s feet to the fire on this recently as well.

D’Souza, unfortunately, squirmed and got to the point to where he just tried to avoid it entirely. He eventually argued “you’ll not find that spirit at all in the New Testament. In fact, in the New Testament, you have a spirit of forgiveness.”

O’Connor said he was getting sick of people handwaving away the genocide of the Amalekites, their combatant men, women, children, and animals. I’ll tell you what I’m getting sick of — people not understanding their Bibles or reading them very closely.

The Amalekite genocide was not a human genocide. It was gigantomachy, and completely moral and good, and I’m tired of people pretending like it wasn’t.

For those unaware, the lineage of Amalek (the father of the Amalekites) is traced back to Genesis 36:11, where Timna, a concubine of Eliphaz, Esau’s son, bore Amelek. Timna was a Horite, as noted in Genesis 36:20-22. The Horites, known to have resided in the hill country of Seir in the land of Edom, are described as giants or Rephaim in Deuteronomy 2 and Exodus 13.

That means that Amalek, who came from Timna the Horite, was also a giant. And, if you know anything about the Biblical narrative, you know that the giants were not actually human. In Genesis 6, when the Nephilim were in the earth, we learn that they were the product of the angelic sons of God and the human daughters of men. The giants were hybrid creatures—they were not humans like you and me. Sure, they had a fleshly body, but if you follow Dr. Michael Heiser’s work with The Unseen Realm or my own in Re-enchanting The Unseen, you’ll know that the giants are where demons come from.

In my book, I wrote this:

In ancient texts from Ugarit, the Rephaim are depicted as quasi-divine dead warrior kings who inhabit the underworld. In other words, the Rephaim are depicted as demi-gods, who are the result of gods and men intermingling. This idea is clearly in sight in Genesis 6 where there are divine sons of God intermingling with the daughters of men and producing the great culture builders – the mighty men of renown. 

This isn’t the only place in the Ancient Near East that this idea comes up.

For example, in The Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh is described as bringing back home a story from before the Flood. He builds walls around the city of Uruk and the holy treasury called the Temple of Heaven. In other words, he was a culture builder and “mighty man of renown” like Nimrod who was also “a mighty one on the earth” (Gen. 10:8 NASB). Interestingly, he is also described as two-thirds god and one-third human. He is also a giant in height, being eighteen feet tall.  

Just like the Rephaim, he was a giant who was part divine and part human. This was spelled out explicitly during the Second Temple Period in The Dead Sea Scrolls. In the scroll called The Book of Giants (4Q530), it says: 

“And all his colleagues entered and Ohiyah explained them what Gilgamesh had told him and Hobabis roared and judgment was pronounced on him. And the guilty cursed the princes, but the giants rejoiced over him and he was cursed again and accepted it. Then two of them dreamed dreams and the sleep of their eyes fled from them . . . And they rose and opened their eyes and they went to Shemihaza, their father. Then he told a story in the congregation of their colleagues, the Nephilim.”

Here, Gilgamesh, the mighty semi-divine King of Uruk is mentioned along with the Nephilim and fallen angelic beings mentioned in the Book of Enoch who was a father of the Nephilim named Shemihaza (or spelled Semiaza, who was the ruler of all the angels mentioned in 1 Enoch 6:7-8). Again, this is an Israelite apologetic against certain religious ideas that were present in the Ancient Near East about gods and the mighty culture builders that were venerated among ancient people. 

The second thing that is of interest that Heiser mentions is that the Rephaim in Ancient Ugarit is depicted as “dead warrior kings who inhabit the underworld.” 

This is the connection point with demons in the Bible. To the surprise of some, we learn that the Bible also speaks of the Rephaim not just as giants, but also as dead warrior kings who inhabit the underworld. As the story of the Bible unfolds, we learn that they have several names that are easy to pass over in English translations. The names they’re given in the Bible are “the dead,” “departed spirits,” and “the shades.” 

We see David speaking of the Rephaim as “the departed spirits” in Psalm 88:9-13: 

“9 My eye languishes from misery. I call on you, O Yahweh, every day; I spread out my hands to you. 10 Do you work wonders for the dead? Or do the departed spirits rise up to praise you? Selah 11 Is your loyal love told in the grave, or your faithfulness in the underworld? 12 Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? 13 But as for me, I cry for help to you, O Yahweh, and in the morning my prayer comes before you.”

The Hebrew word for “departed spirits” who are situated in the underworld of Sheol is רְפָאִים or “Rephaim.” 

Isaiah also speaks of the “dead spirits” in Isaiah 14:9 and 26:14, stating: 

9 Sheol below is getting excited over you, to meet ⌊you when you come⌋; it arouses the dead spirits for you, all of the leaders of the earth. It raises all of the kings of the nations from their thrones.”

“14 The dead do not live; dead spirits do not rise because you have punished and destroyed them, and you have destroyed all memory of them.”

Job also speaks of the “spirits of the dead” who are beneath the waters of the earth who tremble below. 

5 “The spirits of the dead tremble below the waters and their inhabitants. 6 Sheol is naked before him, and there is no covering for Abaddon

Again, the Hebrew word in all three of these texts for “dead spirits”  and “spirits of the dead” is רְפָאִים or “Rephaim.”

This is where the notion that "demons," "unclean spirits," and "evil spirits" stem from the remains of deceased Nephilim comes from. “Demons,” “unclean spirits,” and “evil spirits” in the New Testament are the “spirits of the dead” and “dead spirits” of the Rephaim, who were among the Nephilim clans in the Old Testament. The biblical data couldn’t be clearer.

Whenever you read the Bible in its ancient context, it becomes quite clear that the Amalekites were giants — demonic Rephaim, who were not fully human. So, that’s why God commands that the Israelites eliminate them, their wives, and their children from the land. We’re talking about gigantomachy here, not human genocide.

But what about the animals? Why does God also mention the genocide of Amalekite animals?

Again, if you read the Bible in its ancient near eastern context, you’ll find that they not only took human women and defiled them by impregnating them so that they bore giants, but they also sinned against the birds, beats, reptiles, and fish and devoured flesh and drank blood to where the earth began to lay accusations against them.

1 Enoch 7:1-4 says this explicitly.

¹ And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms ² and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants. And they ³ became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three thousand ells: Who consumed ⁴ all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against ⁵ them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and ⁶ fish, and to devour one another's flesh, and drink the blood. Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones.

Now, make no mistake. I’m not arguing that Enoch is Scripture. But the information is a trace memory of stories that were in the water of the ancient near east. Whenever you read the Bible with the ancient Israelite in your head, it becomes pretty clear why God would command gigantomachy. They were lawless, demonic figures. They defiled not only women but animals.

Alex O’Connor should be confronted with this context. He must either accept the Bible’s depiction of giants as demonic and thus lose the basis of his argument or reject it and consequently undermine his argument by selectively interpreting the text. Christians should not be intimidated by this debate. The biblical context is clear and supports the morality of the gigantomachy described in the scriptures. This argument presents a theological perspective that frames the Amalekite slaughter as a moral and necessary act within the biblical narrative.