The Lord places great significance on the incident recorded in Exodus 17, where Joshua with a chosen company of soldiers went out to fight Amalek, while Moses with Aaron and Hur went up on the hilltop to spend the time in prayer, and Aaron and Hur held up the hands of Moses that his prayers might prevail. God told Moses he should write a memorial of that battle, that it might be remembered through all generations, and the very fact of such a memorial stamps it with great significance as not only a historical event, but as prophetic of things to come.

At the conclusion of the day's warfare, Moses built an altar and called it Jehovah-nissi, that is, the Lord our banner, because the Lord had sworn He would have war with Amalek from generation to generation. But in the margin we read. Because of the hand that was on the throne, that is, because the hands of Moses were held up in prayer, and those hands were laid on the throne of Jehovah and prevailed with God in getting the victory. Because of the importance of this event we ought to look into the items which are suggested in the account.

Amalek was the grandson of Esau, and hence they were cousins to the Israelites, and should have befriended them in their march to Canaan, but on the other hand they did all they could to hinder the Israelites, and made an attack on them to drive them back into Egypt. The Israelites had three great sets of enemies: the Egyptians, corresponding to the world; the Amalekites in the wilderness, corresponding with the flesh; and the giants in Canaan, corresponding with demons and Satan. These are the classes of enemies that we Christians have to oppose. The world attacks us in our bodies and outward social life; and the flesh attacks us in our feelings and sympathies; and Satan attacks us in our faith and conscience and spiritual nature.

In a general sense, we must fight the great battle with the world in the time of repentance, and we must fight the battle with the flesh after our conversion, and we must fight with evil spirits after we are sanctified, or as Paul says, in the high or heavenly places.

In the next place, it was not the Israelites that made the attack on Amalek, but Amalek made the attack on the Israelites, and from this we learn that it is the fleshly nature, the carnal mind, which attacks the spiritual life, to hinder its progress to complete holiness. There is something in the carnal nature which forever opposes heart purity and complete devotion to all the will of God, and for this reason God declares war with all the carnal desires of the heart, and there must be no let up till every evil disposition, every sinful desire, every feverish, fleshly longing is purged away, and the entire soul can settle down into perfect peace and holy love.

In the next place, Moses told Joshua to choose out a special company of brave and faithful men to fight Amalek. Here is a hint that it is the chosen ones of God, the true, elect souls, who set themselves with full purpose of heart to extirpate all evil, and gain complete victory in love and knowledge of God. There is another hint that we must put our choice, our perfect will power, into this matter of extirpating all of the fleshly Amalek. We never can be any better than we choose to be. God watches the things we deliberately choose, and the Holy Spirit seizes hold upon us to co-operate with us in that degree in which we choose complete holiness, the fulness of Christ, and all the purposes of God.

The next item in the incident is the rod of God, which Moses held up toward Heaven while he prayed. That rod had been the instrument of many wonderful miracles; it was a visible emblem of the Word of God, and we are to hold before the the Lord His own words, and plead the accomplishment of those words with unflagging fidelity, as Moses held up the rod.

The next item in the history is the most significant, that when Moses held his hands up, God recognized that the hands of a man were laid on His throne, and because of that the victory was gained, and a decree was issued for the complete destruction of the Amalekites. When Moses was commanded to make the altar for the tabernacle, he w'as told to put horns on the four corners, and in times of great distress people would rush into the tabernacle and lay hold upon the horns of the altar, which was recognized as man's ultimate appeal for divine protection and deliverance.

When Jesus ascended to the right hand of God, He put His human hands on the throne of almighty power, and it is because the hands of the man Christ Jesus are on the throne that His prayer prevails, and through Him we lift up our hands and place them on the same throne, that we may prevail against all our enemies. You see, in reality the only enemy that can really hurt us is that enemy which prevents our holiness, which hinders our union with God, for if our hearts are perfectly pure, and we maintain oneness with Christ, then there is no other enemy in all the universe that can really hurt us.

Now you see the Amalekites, being fleshly cousins of the Israelites, and representing the enemies in the flesh, are the very things that hinder our heart holiness, and so if we prevail over all these fleshly evils, then we will be victorious over all other things. This warfare between Amalek and Israel broke out again years later, and God commanded King Saul to utterly destroy all the Amalekites, and because he failed to do so, through a compromising spirit, he lost his kingdom and his life and his soul. Complete victory over all things depends on our victory over ourselves, our own tempers, our desires, our propensities, and when we, like Moses, lift up our hands and through Jesus lay them on the throne of grace, it is then we gain the day, and all other difficulties will in due time be surmounted. There is a world of encouragement hid away in this marginal reading that the Amalekites were conquered because the hands of a man were upon the throne.