Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Exodus 17:8–13
“Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’ hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun” (vv. 11–12).
God showed His grace to Israel in the wilderness when He did not cast them off for complaining against Him at Marah, in the wilderness of Sin, and at Massah and Meribah but rather supplied their needs for food and water (Ex. 15:22–17:7). In today’s passage we see how He showed His grace yet again when He gave them victory in battle against Amalek.
Amalek was a nation descended from a grandson of Esau, the brother of Jacob, the father of the Israelites (Gen. 36:12). While the Israelites were encamped at Rephidim, the Amalekites attacked them (Ex. 17:8). Apparently, Israel had some advance notice of the assault, for there was time for Moses to have Joshua choose some men from Israel to fight back (Ex. 17:9). This is the first appearance in the Bible of Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ able assistant who would lead the Israelites into Canaan after Moses died (Ex. 33:11; Josh. 1). Here he leads the nation in battle against their foes, indicating that he possessed military skill invaluable for the later dispossession of the Canaanites (Ex. 17:10).
Joshua proved successful in the war against the Amalekites (Ex. 17:13), but the victory was not due to his or the Israelites’ battle prowess. Instead, as we read in Exodus 17:11–12, the Israelites prevailed in the fight as long as Moses could hold the staff of God above his head. When his arms grew tired and he was forced to lower them and the staff, the Amalekites would succeed, but Aaron and Hur stepped in to help Moses keep his arms held high. We do not know much about Hur, though he may have been the husband of Miriam, Moses and Aaron’s sister; that is the view taken by later Jewish tradition. In any case, the Israelites prevailed when the staff was held high because the staff represented God and His power. As long as that was exalted as the true source of Israel’s strength, the nation succeeded, for it meant that God and His sufficiency were being recognized.
Several early church fathers, including Gregory of Nazianzus, Justin Martyr, and John Chrysostom, view Moses as a type of Christ in this event, arguing that his outstretched arms are a figure of Jesus with His arms outstretched on the cross. Probably they are going too far to suggest that Moses’ outstretched arms are a picture of the crucifixion, but there is a foreshadowing of Christ. Like Moses, who exalted God’s glory by raising the staff and praying for the ancient Israelites, Jesus exalts the glory of His Father and even now prays for us, enabling Him to save His people to the uttermost (John 7:18; Heb. 7:25).
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Matthew Henry comments that today’s passage shows that “weapons formed against God’s Israel cannot prosper long, and shall be broken at last. The cause of God and his Israel will be victorious.” God’s Israel consists of all those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 11), so just as the Lord gave the ancient Israelites victory over their enemies, so will He give His church victory over their enemies as they trust in Him.
For Further Study
- Numbers 24:20
- 1 Samuel 15
- 1 Chronicles 4:42–43
- Esther 9