Sermon Tone Analysis

Victory over the Amalekites

Before Israel reached Sinai, the Amalekites came to fight them at Rephidim.

Amalek was a grandson of Esau...

Joshua led the battle effort while Moses went atop a nearby hill.

As long as Moses raised his arms in supplication and reverence to God, Joshua and his soldiers prevailed.

Supplication, Intercession, and Reliance on God.

But when Moses arms fell, the Israelites would be overcome.

Aaron and Hur supported him

Set him on a rock

Supported his arms

The patriarchs also sometimes named altars, particularly in the case of Jacob (Gen 33:20; 35:7).

Moses here follows that example as well, by including a divine name in the name of the altar just as Jacob, for example, had done.

Moses chose the name, lit., “Yahweh is my Signal Pole” (NIV “The LORD is my Banner”).

The Hebrew word nēs, here translated “banner” in the NIV, does have that meaning in later Hebrew in the sense of a ship’s ensign (Ezek 27:7), but in all earlier texts it refers not to something made of fabric or cloth but of a decorated pole held high and used as a signal marker or signal pole (Isa 5:26; 11:10, 12; 13:2; 18:13; 30:17 [where it is parallel to a word meaning “flag staff”]; 31:9; 49:22; 62:10; Jer 4:6, 21; 50:2; 51:12, 27; Ps 60:4).

It can also have the more generic sense of “sign/warning” (Num 26:10) and can as well mean just “pole” (Num 21:8) or “ship’s mast” (Isa 33:23).

Most often it is used in military contexts, where the nēs is a signal pole around which an army or army unit can rally, regroup, or return for instructions

Jericho -

Several hundred years later, God commanded King Saul to fight against the Amalekites as punishment for their attack at Rephidim (1 Sam 15:1–35).

A victory would secure Judah’s southern border and its settlements in the Negev.

Although God ordered all the people and goods of the Amalekites to be destroyed, Saul spared at least their king, Agag, as well as the best of the livestock.

This act of disobedience was so severe that God rejected Saul as king and dispatched Samuel to anoint David as Israel’s new king (Rainey, Bridge, 146–147).

Later, when David was hiding from Saul in the Negev with his men and their families, Amalekites attacked and plundered the camp while the soldiers were away.

David pursued and defeated them.

First Samuel 30:1–31 records that “only” 400 men got away, implying either that Saul had left many more survivors than just the king, or that there were other Amalekites that Saul did not confront.

In the book of Esther, the villian Haman is repeatedly called an “Agagite” (e.g., Esth 3:1), linking back to the Amalekite king spared by Saul.

Haman tried to exterminate the Jews through an edict of King Xerxes of Persia.

If not for the actions of Esther, the people would have been destroyed.

Jericho

7 And he said to the people, “Proceed, and march around the city, and let him who is armed advance before the ark of the LORD.”

And it happened when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat.

Then the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.

Sword of the Spirit