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20.And when he looked on Amalek. This people had already been destined to destruction by a Divine decree; but what God had before declared, is here again ratified by Moses. Although the vengeance, which God was about to take, lay dormant for many ages, it was at length experimentally proved that God had not threatened in vain. But, whilst it is true that they were destroyed by Saul, still we learn from the history that some still survived, and again inhabited their land. In order, therefore, to arrive at the entire accomplishment of this prophecy, we must come to Christ, whose kingdom is the eternal destruction of all the wicked. Poor and unsatisfactory is the view of some commentators (179) who think that Amalek is called “ first of the nations,” because they first took up arms against Israel, and encountered them in order to prevent their advance. Rather is the pride of Amalek indirectly rebuked, because they claimed superiority for themselves over other nations, and this on the score of their antiquity, as if they had been created together with the sun and moon. There is then a pointed comparison between this noble origin, and the slaughter which awaited them at their end.
(179) “ all the paraphrasts,” says Drusius, in Poole’ Syn. See margin A. V., and the gloss in the Geneva Bible.