Exodus17chapter 17

This is the first war Israel fights as a nation, and it comes before the law, before the tabernacle and directly after the water. Matthew Henry and Adam Clarke both trace Amalek to Esau by way of Eliphaz at Genesis 36:12, which would make the first nation to attack Israel a relative. John Gill records the objection that the desert Amalekites look older than that son of Eliphaz, so the descent is a reading held by named men rather than a settled fact. Deuteronomy 25:18 supplies what Exodus leaves out, that they struck the faint and weary at the back of the column.

Exodus 17:9-10

Joshua is named here for the first time in Scripture, and the man who will lead Israel into the land is introduced choosing men for a fight. The work is split between a valley and a hilltop, with the sword below and the rod of God above. Hur arrives in verse 10 with no introduction at all, and he stands with Aaron again at 24:14 when Moses goes up the mountain. Josephus and the rabbis make him the husband of Miriam, which is tradition rather than anything the text says.

Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up: Joshua does as Moses instructed him, and obedience is the first thing recorded of him. Adam Clarke identifies the Hur who went up the hill with the Hur of 1 Chronicles 2:19, a son of Caleb in the line of Judah. On that reading he is Bezalel's grandfather.

Exodus 17:11-13

The battle rises and falls with the hand on the hill rather than with the fighting in the valley, and the verse says it twice so the reader cannot miss it. What the raised hand means has been read two ways, as a banner lifted to rally the men, and as the posture of prayer, which is how the Targum renders it and how John Gill reports the older Jewish readers. A stone is put under Moses and two men hold his arms steady until sundown, so the thing the day turns on is the thing that gives out first. Joshua wins the field with the edge of the sword, and the account still gives him the credit by name.

his hands remained steady until the sun went down: Steady translates emunah, the Hebrew noun used elsewhere for faithfulness, as at Habakkuk 2:4. Albert Barnes takes the length of the fight, a full day to sundown, as a mark of Amalek's strength, a people he thinks were trained by wars with Egypt. He calls it a deliberate attack.

Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his army: The verse names Amalek and his army as two parties. John Gill records the reading that Amalek was the title of their king, as Pharaoh was the title of Egypt's, and finds no ground for it in Scripture. He takes the army as the allies Amalek brought to the fight.

This is the first command in Scripture to write anything, and the subject of it is the blotting out of Amalek. The word memorial was used at 3:15 of the name of God, and here it is attached to a written record meant to outlast the men who fought. Moses is told to rehearse it in the ears of Joshua, which puts it in front of the man who will still be leading forty years later. Deuteronomy 25:17 to 25:19 repeats the charge, 1 Samuel 15 is where Saul is sent to carry it out, and Haman is still called the Agagite at Esther 3:1.

Exodus 17:15-16

And Moses built an altar: The name is given to the altar rather than to the place, and the name is Jehovah-nissi, the LORD my banner. Verse 16 is one of the hardest lines in the book to render, since the Hebrew reads a hand upon the throne of the LORD, and translators differ over whose hand it is. The King James takes it as an oath sworn by God, while Adam Clarke reads it as the hand of Amalek set against the throne of God. Both readings leave the same result standing, that the war runs from generation to generation, and the rest of the Old Testament treats it as still open.

In the throne of the LORD the name is Yah, the short form used before this only in the song at 15:2. The word for throne is a shortened form, kes. The LORD's war against Amalek reaches David at 1 Samuel 30 and ends at 1 Chronicles 4:43, where men of Simeon strike the last of Amalek in Hezekiah's day.