The Haftorah is taken from the first Sefer of Shmuel, Chapter 16, Pessukim 1 — 34 (Ashkenazzim start at Possuk 2 of that Chapter) inclusive.
1. We are commanded in the Torah to “always remember what Ammolayk did to us when we were on our way out from Egypt” (see the notes to PORROSHAS “ZOCHOIR”) with the implication that this public “remembering” should be at least once a year. Our Chachommim, of blessed memory, instituted that this commandment should be carried out by means of the special Torah reading for Maftir on the Shabbos immediately before Purim. This is a most fitting time because the festival of Purim celebrates our deliverance by HaShem from the plot of Hommon, who prided himself on being a direct descendent of the Ammolaykite king Aggag (see the Megillas Ester, where those miraculous events are all set out) and our Haftorah is the account of the battle against the Ammolaykites in the time of King Shaul. Incidentally, our Chachommim point out for us that if not for King Shaul’s misplaced compassion which delayed the execution of Aggag, we would not have had to endure the very real and frightening threat of his descendent Hommon so many years later. This Haftorah gives us an opportunity to learn lessons from this period in our history and especially from this particular event.
2. Our Haftorah opens with HaShem’s instruction through Shmuel HaNovvi to the newly-crowned King Shaul to go to war against the warlike Ammolaykites who had been sending in mujahidin terrorists to harass the people and the countryside. King Shaul immediately mustered a large army of fighting men and, after warning-off the friendly clan of Kaynites, he led the people into battle against Ammolayk and vanquished them, capturing their king Aggag alive, together with a great amount of booty. But he had erred once before when he joined battle with the Plishtim without waiting for Shmuel to be at his side and he erred this time too in that he spared some of the Ammolaykites and their king despite being warned not to. The consequences come quickly. HaShem tells Shmuel that He is angry with Shaul and has taken the kingship from him to give it to someone better. All night long, Shmuel begs HaShem to forgive Shaul but to no avail. The next morning, he makes his way to Shaul and confronts him about his disobedience of HaShem’s instructions — and tells him of HaShem’s anger and its implications for his kingship.
3. Only a few short years previously, the people had asked Shmuel HaNovvi for a king. Shmuel had stood at the leadership of the Nation and had aged quickly in their service and now seemed to be coming to the end of his life. His sons, although they were great people, were not as great as their father was and the people did not want them to be their leaders. They wanted a king “like all the peoples round us.” In itself, there was nothing wrong with the people’s demand — in HaShem’s plan for His People, there is to be a king. But that king is to come from the Tribe of Yehudah and the demand for a king at that juncture was really premature. Nevertheless, if a king is what the people want, a king they shall have. And if the time had not arrived yet for a king from the Tribe of Yehudah, there would have to be an interim monarchy, so to speak, and for this interim king HaShem told Shmuel to anoint Shaul ben Kish of the Tribe of Binyomin. In all of the Nation, he was the most worthy. A man of noble righteousness and of imposing appearance, he was a man with brave qualities of leadership as well as refined humility. It was understood that the House of Shaul was a monarchy that would not endure for it would have to make way for the House of Yehudah, but even so, it could have lasted for many, many years and indeed could have had a rôle as a deputy leader (though not king) under a King of Yehudah if Shaul would not have erred in the dramatic ways that he did.
4. When HaShem appointed Shaul to be the first ever king of the Jewish People, he granted him רוח הקודש — the Divine Spirit — to supplement and enhance his natural qualities of leadership, so that he should rule over His people with sagacity and wisdom. But after the débâcle of, first, the war against the Plishtim (when Shaul was panicked into going into battle before Shmuel had come) and secondly, the present battle against Ammolayk, when Shaul was mistakenly merciful, HaShem deposed him from being king and that Divine Spirit was taken from him. After being endowed with רוח הקודש, to have it taken away — the result in Shaul was that he was smitten with a terrible black depression and a deep melancholia. During his attacks of depression, Shaul was not able to see straight and, truly sick man that he was, he tried to do away with Dovid, his own son-in-law and the one whom HaShem had appointed to be the successor to the throne, for in Shaul’s eyes he was a usurper and a traitor to the king (מורד במלכות) and deserving of the death penalty. (See also Haftorah to Shabbos Erev Rosh Chodesh.) As a matter of fact, Shaul was never punished for trying to kill Dovid for he was a stricken man and sick.
5. Despite appearances, the enmity between Ammolayk and ourselves is not because they attacked us, a peaceful, defenceless and weary people on our way out from the slavery of Egypt to our own country, for if that were the reason, we would be under an obligation to hate and pursue and take vengeance against many other nations and peoples whose encounters with us through the centuries and millennia have been many times more vicious and horribly protracted. No, our hatred of Ammolayk is a command of HaShem because Ammolayk set themselves up as the enemy of HaShem and of everything G-dly. But because they obviously can’t get at G-d, they attack His People and that was the reason that they attacked us then in the Wilderness. (And that, despite their “rationalizations” and “explanations” to justify their hatred of us, is the true reason for the vicious anti-Semites of today who hate us — it is because we are G-d’s Chosen People.) The attack by Ammolayk then was only the first instance of that hatred against G-d. (See SIDRA OF THE WEEK: בשלח.)
6. The battle that Shaul was to fight against Ammolayk was to have been the completion of the battle we fought in the Wilderness under the leadership of Mosheh our Teacher. It was to have been a battle against the self-declared enemies of G-d, fought purely because they were haters of G-d. To take any spoils, as Shaul did, annulled the very purpose of that battle and irretrievably reduced it to no more than an ordinary mercenary battle. The war that should have been fought solely to bring about the end of those who proclaimed themselves the enemies of G-d and through their destruction thus bring peace to the world — that war was diminished and reduced to an ordinary battle for loot, fuelled by vengeance.
7. Interestingly enough, later, when Dovid becomes king, he is never commanded to go to war against Ammolayk and this very fact helps us to understand the gravity of the offence of the otherwise righteous King Shaul. It seems that it was only at this exact point in our history that the entire fighting people of Ammolayk, the self-appointed enemy of G-d, were gathered at that one place to do battle with the People of G-d. It was a unique moment in our history and in the history of the world, in fact, the only opportunity in the history of mankind, when we, the People of G-d, could have been rid of this curse of humanity — and the opportunity was missed. And because of this mistake of King Shaul, how much human misery, over the following thousands of years, has been the result! Never again, till far in the future, when the righteous King Moshiach will lead the battle to obliterate from this world this cursed people and its atheistic self-glorifying ideology of might, will there come the time to be rid of the declared enemy of everything G-dly, to be rid of the cruel persecutors of G-d’s Own People and to be rid of those unholy hypocrites who have usurped that wonderful title to themselves. Only when humankind will thus be rid of this cursed people called Ammolayk and only when its evil influence over the affairs of mankind will cease, only then will a suffering mankind find true joy and happiness under the Sovereignty of G-d Almighty, brought about by the righteous King Moshiach.
8. Our Chachommim, of blessed memory, tell us that one of the important lessons we are to learn from Shaul is to obey the word of HaShem and to take care not to be more righteous than HaShem Himself. When Shmuel told Shaul that he was to attack Ammolayk and utterly destroy them, he was sorely troubled. After all, the command was terrible and ferocious: “Go now and smite Ammolayk, utterly destroy all that he has and have no pity on them. You are to kill man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey!” Indeed, because this command ran so fiercely against the compassionate nature of any normal human being and how much more so against the especially merciful and kind character of the Jewish People, for that reason Shmuel HaNovvi had to impress upon Shaul his duty to obey this dreadful command from HaShem. For HaShem knows the future and when He does give us a command whereby we are to be instrumental in forging that future, and He tells us exactly what to do, it is not for us to try to interfere in HaShem’s plans. If we do, at the time it might seem as if we have ameliorated a harsh order but then, when events unfold, oftentimes the horrific results of a supposed kindness can be unspeakable and horrific cruelty to so many others, if not at that time, then later. By way of an example, the miserably misguided idiot woman who stopped the young Adolf Hitler from committing suicide can be said to be directly responsible for the death of over fifty million people, so many of them in hideously cruel circumstances. Of course, nobody can dare to say who is going to grow into a Hitler. Nobody, that is, except HaShem. In this rare instance of HaShem commanding the destruction of Ammolayk and the ridding of evil even before it had fully materialised, Shaul committed a terrible wrong which had far-reaching results down to today.
9. Our Chachommim tell us that Shaul wrestled with himself that night over the command of Shmuel. He wondered whether it was possible that HaShem would command such
