O perigo da contamina\u00e7\u00e3o espiritual espreita os eleitos desde a antiguidade.
From the time of Israel's journey through the desert, one nation was cited as one of the great enemies of God's people: Amalek.
It was a nation formed by desert raiders, who attacked other peoples and stole what they produced, leaving them without any sustenance, while they enjoyed the spoils of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Exodus 17:8-16<\/mark><\/strong> It records the famous episode in which Moses had to have his hands supported by Aaron and Hur so that divine blessing would be granted to Israel to end the attacks of the Amalekites, and even in verse 14 appears God's promise to end this plundering people definitively, "erasing their memory from under heaven.".<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, that promise was not fulfilled immediately. Saul, who had already been warned by Samuel that his kingdom would not endure after his first failure to obey a divine order (see 1\u00ba Samuel 13:8-14<\/mark><\/strong>), was confronted by the prophet in an even harsher manner, in the well-known episode in which he tried to restrain him, tearing the hem of his cloak, and hearing that in doing so the kingdom of Israel would be torn from him.
As we can see in 1\u00ba Samuel 15<\/mark><\/strong>, It was in a war against Amalek that the first king of Israel, Saul, was definitively rejected by God, after failing to carry out his orders to completely exterminate that people, sparing neither the king, nor the people, nor their possessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The reason for this harsh divine order\u2014for the complete extermination of Amalek\u2014is clear in Samuel's pronouncement of the death sentence against the king of that people, Agag:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c"Just as your sword has taken children from women, so your mother will be bereaved of her son among women!"\u201d
And at that very moment he hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal.<\/span><\/div>