Chapter 25: The Amalekites
The book of 1 Samuel notes the people identified as Amalekites lived in Shur, or Seir, since the ancient times; translation: before the flood. Ancient times do not refer to the time of Abraham. The terms “ancient times, old, old, former times, long ago” and “before our time” were always understood as the pre- flood epoch. This understanding is underscored in its application in Sirach, Baruch, Wisdom, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezra, Daniel, 1 Peter, and 2 Peter, where “ancient” always referred to the time of Noah before the flood. 1 This, then, suggests the Amalekites were in existence as a race of giants in the epoch of the antediluvian Nephilim. In other words, they were Nephilim both before and after the flood.
Were Amalekites the race of giants that descended from Utnapishtim or Gilgamesh? Or were the Amalekites the first strain of giants, the Incorruptible Race hidden from the deluge catastrophe by fallen angels? Amalekites do not appear to be a race created by impassioned fallen angels after the flood, such as Enikiden or those of Sodom. If “ancient times” does not refer to antediluvian times, then it most certainly refers to an age before Abraham, and most likely to the age immediately following the deluge. Whichever the case may be, both predate the standard chronology of the Table of Nations. But in order to make all this stick, we must broaden the support claiming that the Amalekites were without any doubt a pure strain of the surviving Nephilim race. Numbers recorded more evidence for this.
“We even saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites live in Negev” (Num. 13:23). This passage calls Amalekites Anakites. I do not know how to interpret this verse any differently, as it describes the descendants of Anak in the same breath and narrative as the Amalekites, thereby connecting the two, just as the flood narrative describes the flood and the Nephilim in the same narrative, connecting them also by application and implication. The passage from the book of Numbers does not implicitly state the descendants of Anak lived among the Amalekites; rather it seems to imply that the Amalekites were actually descendants of Anak! Numbers 13:22 states, “They went up through the Negev and came to Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the descendants of Anak lived.” Here, and in Judges and Joshua, three Amalekite/Anakite kings were clearly named. 2
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