Deuteronomy 25:17-19 – Removing obstacles that hinder our journey

To show kindness and to love one another was how Israel as God’s people was expected to relate with each other. But with the Canaanites, they must not show compassion, they must annihilate them instead. It was obvious that God wanted to have the source of evil influence removed from among His people. Like cancerous cells that must be removed so that they could not cause mutation to the good cells in the body, so also must the Canaanites be removed. 

But in Deuteronomy 25:17-19, God included the Amalekites, a non-Canaanite nation in the list of foreign people to be removed and uprooted. God explicitly instructed them in verse 19 saying, “…it shall come about when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your surrounding enemies, in the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; you must not forget.” Why?

In verses 17-18, God provided the reason for the removal of the Amalekites. It was because of what they did to the people of Israel when they came out of Egypt. Instead of lending a hand to assist them, they heartlessly attacked them. They targeted the stragglers, the weak, faint, and weary at the rear end of the departing Israelites. In doing that they had shown no respect for God. For in touching the covenant people of God they were touching the pupil of God’s eye. Taking advantage of their exhaustion, the Amalekites badgered the people of Israel. Exodus 17:8-16 recorded Israel’s battle with the Amalekites led by Joshua in which the Lord had granted them the victory. To God, winning that battle alone was not enough, He wanted the Amalekites to be rooted out as soon as His people had settled in the promised land. For God knew best what they must do to ensure total victory.

The lesson to take away is this: in our journey to lay hold of God’s goal for our lives completely, we will have to continuously deal with negative habits that would sabotage our achievement. We must uproot those habits totally. For if we don’t uproot them completely, they have the capability to come back and trouble us all over again. The question we must ask ourselves is: what are some besetting habits in our lives that we thought we have dealt with but can spring up to trouble us again? We need to take time to identify them and determinedly deal with them to have them uprooted once and for all. Don’t let them interfere with the goal God has for our lives!