Question Corner by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jan 31, 1906

Question Corner

By Editor

1769.—Questions on the Amalekites.

1. Saul destroyed all the Amalekites except Agag, who was slain shortly afterwards by Samuel. This point is brought to view in the Sabbath-School Lesson of October 21, and the inference is made there that these Amalekites increased greatly during the next twenty-three years. How could these Amalekites increase so much in twenty-three years if they were all destroyed by Saul and Samuel?

2. Where were these Amalekites to receive their punishment? When does Deut. 25 : 19 place this event?

3. How could the Amalekites become so strong in thirty years if Saul slew them all except Agag? 1 Sam. 15 : 8, 31.

1. In all probability, Saul destroyed only those who came out to fight with him or were in those cities which he took. Those who were left certainly increased in a few years enough to take Ziglag. See 1 Sam. 30 : 1, 2. The “all” were confined to those in the cities and immediate places where Saul fought.

2. The Lord designed that the Amalekites should receive their punishment when He gave Saul his commission to punish. And Deut. 25 : 19 would have been fulfilled then had Saul been faithful to God. As it was, the Amalekites increased—those who were left—until they had become strong enough in power and influence to induce others to unite with them, and they were doubtless the ones that were destroyed by the Jews in the time of Mordecai. When the issue was once understood, that Mordecai was a Jew, and that Haman was determined to slay the Jews, the whole old controversy must have been raised between Israel and the Amalekites, and doubtless at that time Amalek as a people perished.

1770.—Conduct of Vashti.

How do you know the reason Vashti would not come in before the king? The Bible is silent, and if it is the reason given in the lesson would she have been doing wrong even tho she went against custom? Please explain.

A knowledge of the ancient customs and of their manners at great feasts makes it very clear indeed as to why the king desired that Vashti should come before them. It was when they were well-drunken with wine that he commanded the queen to come to exhibit her beauty in a way that no true woman would submit to before a crowd of gross, drunken men; and that too seems evident from the record itself, “and therefore the queen Vashti refused to come at the king’s command.” We have an instance of this in which the shameless daughter of a more shameless mother, Herodias, danced before King Herod when his heart was merry with wine, and being influenced and inflamed by her beauty, commanded that any request that she should make should be given her, even to the half of the kingdom. Vashti did a noble thing in refusing. As history does not mention the name of Vashti as the queen of Xerxes or Ahasuerus it has been supposed, and may probably have been true, that she was only one of the favorite, legitimate concubines according to the customs of that time, but one evidently who prized her purity and womanliness. The world has ever honored her for the course she pursued.