1 Samuel 30 · a question people ask
Hadn't Saul already destroyed the Amalekites in chapter 15?
Chapter 15 says Saul "struck the Amalekites, from Havilah as you go to Shur, which is before Egypt" (15:7), and "utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword" (15:8). Yet David raids the Amalekites (27:8), the Amalekites raid Ziklag (30:1), and here "four hundred young men who rode on camels and fled" (30:17) escape David. The book doesn't explain how both stand, and this answer doesn't go past it. At Endor Saul hears, "Because you didn’t obey the LORD’s voice, and didn’t execute his fierce wrath on Amalek, therefore the LORD has done this thing to you today" (28:18). Chronicles later speaks of "the remnant of the Amalekites who escaped" (1 Chronicles 4:43). Chapter 15's honest question sets out how Christians read the command itself (15:3). This chapter doesn't say whether the raid on Ziklag answered David's raids in chapter 27; it gives no reason for it.
The verses
“Now go and strike Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and don’t spare them; but kill both man and woman, infant and nursing baby, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’””
“Saul struck the Amalekites, from Havilah as you go to Shur, which is before Egypt. He took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.”
“David and his men went up and raided the Geshurites, the Girzites, and the Amalekites; for those were the inhabitants of the land who were of old, on the way to Shur, even to the land of Egypt.”
“Because you didn’t obey the LORD’s voice, and didn’t execute his fierce wrath on Amalek, therefore the LORD has done this thing to you today.”