Shabbat Zachor: Remembering Amalek

The Four Special Shabbatot

Shabbat Zachor is the second of four special Shabbatot in the weeks before Pesach. The Mishnah lists them in order: Shabbat Shekalim (the half-shekel), Shabbat Zachor (Amalek), Shabbat Parah (the red heifer) and Shabbat HaChodesh (the first month).¹ On each, the weekly portion is read from one Torah scroll and a special maftir (closing reading) from a second, followed by a special haftarah. Shabbat Zachor always falls on the Shabbat immediately before Purim. In a leap year it is in Adar II. See our calendar for this year’s date.

“Remember What Amalek Did”: A Close Reading

The full maftir is three verses:

Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt; How he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not God. Therefore it shall be, when Hashem thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which Hashem thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it.

Several details deserve attention.

“He met thee by the way.” The Hebrew asher karcha baderech (אשר קרך בדרך) can mean “who happened upon you.” Rashi, following the midrash, finds three meanings in the word: chance (mikreh), as if Amalek denied that anything was providential; impurity (keri); and “cooling” (kor), for Amalek “cooled” the awe the nations felt toward Israel after the Exodus, like a man who jumps into a boiling bath and cools it for everyone else, though he is burned.² Amalek’s sin was not only cruelty but contempt for the idea that Hashem acts in history.

“The hindmost… all that were feeble behind thee.” Amalek did not challenge Israel’s strength. It attacked the stragglers: the weak, the sick, the elderly, the exhausted. This is the moral heart of the command. Amalek stands for the enemy who preys on the vulnerable.

“He feared not God.” The phrase recalls the midwives of Egypt, who “feared God” and therefore refused to kill the Hebrew babies (Exodus 1:17). The fear of God is what restrains the strong from abusing the weak. Where it is absent, Amalek appears.

“Remember… thou shalt not forget.” The Torah gives both a positive and a negative command about memory. The sages understood “remember” as something said aloud, since “do not forget” already covers the heart.³ This is the source of the public reading.

The First Battle: Exodus 17

Deuteronomy looks back to the battle at Rephidim, which is read on Purim morning (see the readings for Purim):

And it came to pass, when Moshe held up his hand, that Israel prevailed: and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed.

Aharon and Hur hold up Moshe’s hands until sunset, and Yehoshua defeats Amalek. Hashem tells Moshe to write the event “for a memorial in a book,” and Moshe builds an altar called Hashem Nissi, “Hashem is my banner.” He declares that “Hashem will have war with Amalek from generation to generation” (Exodus 17:14–16).

The Mishnah asks the obvious question:

But could the hands of Moshe make war or break war? Rather, this teaches you: as long as Israel looked upward and subjected their hearts to their Father in heaven, they prevailed; and if not, they fell.

The victory over Amalek belongs to Hashem. Moshe’s raised hands were a signal to lift the heart in prayer. Rashi adds that Moshe, Aharon and Hur stood together because the people were fasting, and on a fast day three lead the prayers.⁴

Shaul, Agag and the Haftarah

The haftarah of Shabbat Zachor is 1 Samuel 15, the story of King Shaul’s war against Amalek. Ashkenazi congregations begin at verse 2, “Thus saith Hashem of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel”; Sephardi congregations begin a verse earlier, with Shmuel’s charge to Shaul; both end at verse 34.⁵

Shaul is commanded to destroy Amalek completely. He wins the battle but spares Agag the king and the best of the flocks. When Shmuel confronts him, Shaul claims the animals are for sacrifice. Shmuel’s reply is one of the great sayings of the prophets:

Hath Hashem as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of Hashem? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.

Shaul loses the kingdom. Shmuel has Agag brought before him; Agag comes “delicately,” thinking “Surely the bitterness of death is past,” but Shmuel answers, “As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women,” and puts him to death (1 Samuel 15:32–33). Agag is judged as a killer of children, not merely as a member of a nation.

The sages saw in Shaul a warning about misplaced mercy. The Talmud imagines Shaul arguing that if the Torah is so careful about one human life, he should be merciful to the many, and a heavenly voice answers, “Be not righteous over much” (Ecclesiastes 7:16).⁶ A midrash draws the lesson: “Whoever becomes merciful in place of cruelty will in the end become cruel in place of mercy,” and points to Shaul, who spared Agag and later massacred the priests of Nov (1 Samuel 22).⁷ The Purim connection is unmistakable: Haman the Agagite descended, in the biblical framing, from the king Shaul failed to judge, and Mordechai, of Shaul’s tribe and family (Esther 2:5), completes what Shaul left undone.

The Halacha of the Reading

A Torah obligation? The Talmud links the reading of Zachor to the Torah’s command to “remember” aloud.³ Tosafot explain that certain portions, “such as Parashat Zachor,” must be read publicly by Torah law.⁸ The Shulchan Aruch records this view: “Some say that Parashat Zachor and Parashat Parah are obligatory by Torah law,” and therefore people in villages without a minyan should travel to a place with one on those Shabbatot; the Rema adds that if they cannot, they should at least read the passages themselves with the proper cantillation.⁹

Women. Whether women are obligated is debated. The Sefer HaChinuch teaches that the mitzvah of remembering Amalek is mainly for men, who were responsible for waging war.¹⁰ Other authorities, notably the Minchat Chinuch, disagree, and many communities hold that women should hear it. In practice, many women attend on Shabbat Zachor, and some communities hold an additional reading during the afternoon for those who could not come in the morning.¹¹

Zecher and zeicher. The word “remembrance” in Deuteronomy 25:19 can be vocalized zecher (with a segol) or zeicher (with a tzere), and manuscripts and scholars differed on which is correct. The Mishnah Berurah recommends reading the phrase both ways to be sure the obligation is fulfilled, and that is now the common Ashkenazi custom.¹² It is a vivid illustration of the seriousness with which this short reading is treated.

Amalek and Conscience: Reading a Hard Command

The command to “blot out the remembrance of Amalek” troubles many readers, and it should be read with care. Jewish tradition has done precisely that.

No living people can be identified as Amalek. The Mishnah records that when Yehudah, an Ammonite convert, asked to marry into Israel, Rabbi Yehoshua permitted it, explaining that Sennacherib king of Assyria “came up and mixed up all the nations.”¹³ Later authorities applied the same principle to Amalek: since the ancient peoples were deported and mingled, no living nation or person can be identified as biblical Amalek, and the command to wage war against Amalek has no practical application to any existing people.¹⁴

Peace is offered first. Maimonides rules that no war, not even the war against Amalek, may be waged without first offering peace. If the enemy accepts peace and the moral laws given to the children of Noach, “it is forbidden to deceive them.”¹⁵ Commentators explain that an Amalekite who accepts these laws is no longer “Amalek” at all.

Even Haman’s descendants. The Talmud states that “descendants of Haman learned Torah in Bnei Brak.”¹⁶ The door of repentance is not shut to anyone. What is condemned is not blood but the way of Amalek.

Amalek as a moral principle. For these reasons, Jewish teachers across the centuries have understood Amalek chiefly as a spiritual and moral reality: cruelty to the weak (Deuteronomy 25:18), denial of providence, and hatred of the people of God. The Torah’s oath of war “from generation to generation” (Exodus 17:16) is understood as Hashem’s own war against such evil, a war that He Himself will finish.

This careful reading is not a softening of Scripture. It is faithfulness to the whole of Scripture, which also commands, “Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge… but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Leviticus 19:18), and, “If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat” (Proverbs 25:21). The command to remember Amalek can never be used to justify hatred of any people or violence against innocents. To do so would be to become Amalek.

Remembering Amalek as a Follower of Yeshua

The Brit Hadashah (the New Testament) takes evil with full seriousness. It speaks of a war, but it locates the deepest enemy beyond flesh and blood:

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Paul tells believers to “be strong in the Master, and in the power of his might,” and to take up truth, righteousness, the readiness of the good news of peace, faith, salvation and “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,” and to pray at all times (Ephesians 6:10–18). The armor is drawn from Isaiah (Isaiah 11:5; 52:7; 59:17). Moshe’s raised hands at Rephidim are a fitting picture of this kind of warfare. It is a homiletical connection, not the plain meaning of Exodus 17, but it is close to the Mishnah’s own reading: Israel prevails when hearts are lifted to the Father in heaven.

Yeshua also taught:

Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.

How do “remember Amalek” and “love your enemies” fit together? Not by cancelling either one. Yeshua did not teach indifference to evil; he spoke sharply against those who harm “these little ones” (Matthew 18:6), which is exactly Amalek’s sin against the weak. Love of enemies means refusing personal vengeance and seeking their good, while still calling evil by its name and defending the vulnerable. Paul holds the two together: “Avenge not yourselves… for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith Hashem” (Romans 12:19, quoting Deuteronomy 32:35). We remember Amalek so that we never become indifferent to cruelty; we leave final judgment to Hashem so that we never become cruel.

Shaul’s failure also warns believers that partial obedience dressed up as worship is still disobedience (compare Luke 6:46).

The Prophetic Horizon: The Final Defeat of Evil

Bilam, the hired prophet, looked out over Amalek and said:

Amalek was the first of the nations; but his latter end shall be that he perish for ever.

Amalek was the first to attack Israel after the Exodus; its “latter end” (acharit, a word that often points to the end of days) will be destruction. The Torah’s oath of war “from generation to generation” (Exodus 17:16) means that the spirit of Amalek will reappear until Hashem Himself brings it to an end. Rashi, following the midrash, reads that verse as teaching that Hashem’s Name and throne are not complete until Amalek is blotted out.¹⁷ The final defeat of Amalek belongs to the coming of the Kingdom, when “the kingdom shall be Hashem’s” (Obadiah 1:21).

The Brit Hadashah describes that end. In Revelation 19, the Messiah rides out as a faithful and true judge, with a sharp sword going out of his mouth, the word of God (Revelation 19:11–16); the beast and the false prophet are defeated. In Revelation 20, the adversary is bound and finally destroyed, the dead are raised, and every person is judged according to their works (Revelation 20:10–15). Then comes the new heaven and earth, where “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death” (Revelation 21:4; compare Isaiah 25:8). The war with Amalek ends not because Israel becomes like Amalek but because Hashem Himself removes evil from His world.

Until then, we remember. Shabbat Zachor trains us to notice the weak at the back of the line, to resist those who prey on them, and to hope for the day when the Name and the throne are complete.

Keeping Shabbat Zachor

In general terms:

• Hear the reading. Make every effort to be present in a congregation for the maftir of Deuteronomy 25:17–19. Listen to every word, with the intention of fulfilling the command to remember. See our calendar for this year’s date.
• Prepare. Before Shabbat, read Exodus 17:8–16, Deuteronomy 25:17–19 and 1 Samuel 15, and talk them over with your family.
• Teach the hard questions well. Help children and newcomers understand what Amalek means and what it does not mean: Amalek is cruelty to the weak and contempt for God, never a license to hate any people.
• Look after the “hindmost.” Let the reading move you to care for the weak in your community: the elderly, the sick, the lonely, the newcomer.
• Prepare for Purim. Shabbat Zachor leads into the Fast of Esther and Purim. Plan your gifts to the poor and your portions for friends.

Hashem hath sworn that Hashem will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.