Mishkal HaMitzvah — The Weight of the Mitzvah of Amalek
We open with the posuk: "Vayomer Shmuel el Shaul, osi shalach Hashem limsho'ach ocha lemelech al amo Yisrael..." (Shmuel Aleph 15:1). Why does Shmuel begin precisely this way — "I am the one Hashem sent to anoint you"? The Ramban and others note that this is no mere introduction; it's a tremendous hachrazah. Rav Aharon Kotler zt"l explains that every neshamah has its defining regע — the one mitzvah or test that stands as the ikker of its entire existence. There are hundreds of daily chiyuvim, but then comes the sha'as ha'nesiyono hagadol, the pivotal moment for which a person was placed in this world. For Shaul Hamelech, this was the milchemes Amalek. Shmuel comes and says: "This is why I anointed you — precisely for this mitzvah." It's as if he's saying, "Hinei ha'sha'ah she'nivcharta lah!" The weight is enormous; fail here, and the whole anointment loses its tachlis.
Next — "Koh amar Hashem... Pakadeti es asher asah Amalek leYisrael..." (15:2). What is this lashon of "pakadeti"? We can distinguish sharply between zachar (simple remembering) and pakad — which carries the sense of active bikur and hashgachah pratit. Like a person who "poked" an old account long left aside, or notices a chaser at the table (as in "pakadti eschem" implying something missing needs attention). Hashem is saying: "I have reopened the file on Amalek; the cheshbon that was pending since Yetzias Mitzrayim is now coming due." Amalek attacked the nechshalim, the weak stragglers — a deliberate war on Hashem's hashgachah. Now Hashem is poked — actively revisiting and executing din.
The command itself: "Go and strike Amalek, and place cherem everything... from man to woman, from infant to suckling, from ox to sheep..." (15:3). Here the kushya hits hard: How can there be such a command to kill tinokos and behemah? Mercy on the cruel ends up becoming cruelty to the innocent. Amalek is not just a nation; it's a ** shoresh** of tumah that, if any remnant survives, will regrow and strike again — just as a root left in the ground sprouts anew. The din is on the klal as a corporate entity, not only on the individual; the whole national existence embodies the opposition to kedushas Yisrael and Hashem's throne.
And why the animals? Two major pshatim:
Rashi (on the posuk and in chumash): To utterly erase the zecher Amalek. If even one behemah survives, people will say, "This ox was Amalek's," and the memory persists. Total cherem means total obliteration of their zecher — nothing left to point to.
Chazal in the Gemara (and mystical sources like the Zohar and later achronim): Amalek were ba'alei kishuf; they could transform or disguise themselves via magic. Therefore, the command includes the animals lest some Amaleki escape by shape-shifting into behemah. Nothing can be spared.
Now the critical moment: "Vayarav banachal" (15:5). The Gemara in Yoma 22b reads: al inyanei nachal — not just a geographical valley, but nachal as in nachal hadin, or a vikuach of sevara. Shaul stood there and made a kal vachomer: "If the gedolim sinned, what did the ketanim do? And if the bnei adam sinned, mah chata'u habehemah?" He reasoned with "rachmanus" and spared Agag, the best sheep and oxen, etc.
But look at the tremendous stirah in Shaul's middos! Here he becomes a ba'al chesed and questions Hashem's din on the "innocent" of Amalek — yet later, by the episode of Nov Ir HaKohanim, he commands the slaughter of Jewish kohanim, pure and innocent, without hesitation! And he pursues his own son Yehonasan, the tzaddik, to kill him! This is the tragedy of selective rachmanus — when a person applies "mercy" against Hashem's command but shows no mercy where true rachmanus is required. It's a middah of sheker dressed as tzidkus. The true ben Torah must ask: When I feel the urge to question a gezeiras HaKadosh Baruch Hu, am I consistent? Or is it just my yetzer finding a clever cloak?
This is the weight of the mitzvah — not only to fulfill it externally, but to internalize that Hashem's daas is the only true daas tov va'ra. Shaul's fall began precisely here, in the nachal of his own sevaros. May we be zocheh to accept every mitzvah with simple kabbalas ol, without mixing in our own "rachmanus," and to see clearly where true mercy lies — in aligning perfectly with ratzon Hashem. [מו"ר שליט"א]
