Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass — God commands total destruction ('ḥerem, destruction, the devoted thing'). The command is absolute and without exception: all living creatures are to be destroyed. This is the practice of ḥerem, the holy ban, in which the enemy is devoted to destruction as an offering to God.

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