God's most memorable prophecy
On the website www.biblegateway.com one can search through 50 different English translations of the Bible. You can select a particular verse to be displayed in all 50 translations and scroll down to read how each translation treats that verse. For example, the KJV records Exodus 17:14 thus, "And the Lord said unto Moses, 'Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.'"
Nineteen other versions also say that God will "put out the remembrance of Amalek." Twenty-one versions say, "I will wipe out the memory of Amalek." The Contemporary English Version reads: "Afterwards, the Lord said to Moses, "Write an account of this victory and read it to Joshua. I want the Amalekites to be forgotten forever.'"
So, that is why nobody today has ever heard of Amalek or the Amalekites because God inspired Moses to write it down in his Holy Book so everyone would know he had a grudge against Amalek but have no memory of his name. Brilliant!
To be fair, God did not say when he would annihilate the Amalekites and blot out their memory, in fact, many of the Palestinians today claim to be descendents of the Canaanites and Amalekites who, according to the Bible were in possession of Palestine for hundreds of years before the Israelites robbed them of their land. Who knows, the Amalekites may be around and not forgotten for another several thousand years. Additionally, I don't mean to be too harsh on the primitive people who wrote the Old Testament, they had another problem to solve; they were trying to figure out where the rain came from.
Oren Piper
Siloam Springs
Editorial on 06/19/2019