Agag

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Agag's death ( Gustave Doré )

Agag ( Hebrew אֲגַג ʾAgag ) is a person from the Bible. According to 1 Sam 15: 8 he was a king of the Amalekites . Whatever the historicity of this desert people, the Amalekites have been the enemy par excellence for biblical tradition since Israel left Egypt .

Saul versus Agag

This is the situation assumed by the Agag story in the Book of Samuel (1 Samuel 15: 8–33 EU ). YHWH instructed King Saul to punish the Amalekites and them spell to perform, that humans and animals are to be killed without exception (1 Sam 15,2f.). Saul wages the war successfully, but leaves some sheep and cattle alive, which he allegedly wants to sacrifice later, and also spares Agag, the king of the Amalekites - reasons are not given for this.

The prophet Samuel confronts Saul with his unauthorized actions. Therefore God rejected him and will give kingship to someone more worthy. Then Samuel has the captured Agag brought before him. The Hebrew and Greek textual traditions have a different understanding of this scene:

Masoretic text Septuagint
And Agag went to him tied up, and Agag said: Verily, the bitterness of death is gone! And Samuel said, As your sword made women childless, so shall your mother be childless with women. Then Samuel smote Agag in pieces before the LORD in Gilgal.

(1 Sam 15, 32f., Translation: Zurich Bible )

And Agag came to him trembling, and Agag said, Is death so bitter? And Samuel said to Agag, As your sword made women childless, so will your mother among women be made childless. And Samuel cut Agag down in the sight of the Lord in Gilgal.

(1 kg 15, 32f.)


Shimon Bar-Efrat comments on the Hebrew version as follows: Agag happily go to Samuel "because he assumes that the man of God will send him into freedom or at least save his life."

The biblical blank that no reason is given for the sparing of Agag by Saul was filled by Flavius ​​Josephus in his retelling in the Jewish Antiquities . According to this, Saul captured the Agag and left him alive "because of his beauty and his proud stature."

Balaam sayings about Agag

In Numbers 24.7  EU an Agag is mentioned in a prophecy of Balaam . It is not certain whether the same Agag is meant as in 1 Sam 15, and if so, whether an old historical memory of an opposing king is preserved here; Since the content of the saying does not match the story 1 Sam 15, this could be an indication that the story of Saul's war against the Amalekites has a historical core.

Agag as the ancestor of Haman

The book of Esther is a late bloom in the Hebrew Bible. In an artistic way it plays with motifs from older biblical writings and relates them to one another in a new way. The two protagonists Mordechai and Haman virtually resume the fight that Agag and Saul fought:

  • Mordechai, like Saul, is descended from Kish and is therefore like him a Benjaminite (Est 2,5);
  • Haman is an "Agagite" (Est 3,1).

Mordecai corrects the mistake of his ancestor Saul, and as a result of his righteous action not only Haman is executed, but all his sons as well, "so that the line of the Agagites is finally closed."

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The division of the book of Samuel into books 1 and 2 of Samuel is secondary.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Kraus , Martin Karrer (Ed.): Septuaginta German. The Greek Old Testament in German translation . German Bible Society, Stuttgart 2009, p. 318.
  3. ↑ Shimon Bar-Efrat: The first book of Samuel: a narratological-philological commentary . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2007, p. 223.
  4. ↑ Flavius ​​Josephus: Jüdische Antiquities VI, 7,2. (Translation by Heinrich Clementz )
  5. ↑ Reinhard Müller :  Agag. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (Eds.): The Scientific Biblical Lexicon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff.
  6. ↑ Beate Ego: The Book of Ester (= Biblical Commentary Old Testament. Volume 21 of the revision). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht ,. Göttingen 2017, p. 24.
  7. ↑ James Alfred Loader : Das Buch Ester (= The Old Testament German ). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1992, p. 272.