In 1 Samuel, 15: 3, the Lord tells Saul to go and smite Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have, including ox and sheep, camel and ass. Hence the Amalekites must have been in possession of several settlements and must have tilled the soil and engaged in the breeding of cattle.
Having assembled his men, Saul started on his military expedition from Telam on the southern frontier of Judea. Arriving in front of the main city of the Amalekites, he set his rear guard as an outpost down by a naḥal, or valley with a river. The name of the main city of the Amalekites is not given, nor do we know the name of the river, naḥal, by which the rear guard was set. It is therefore not possible for us to determine exactly where the main dwelling place of Amalek was situated. It was either on the southern border of Judea, to the east or southeast of Beersheba, or else farther to the south near as-Sbejṭa.
Saul defeated the Amalekites and according to 1 Samuel, 15: 7, plundered their camps from Ḥawîla to Šûr “that is over against Egypt.”—Ḥawîla is identical with the classical Arabia Felix, or the modern Neǧd, and its northern frontier is formed by a line from the northern half of the Gulf of al-ʻAḳaba as far as Babylon. If Saul smote the Amalekites from Ḥawîla to Šûr (the western part of the Sinai Peninsula bordering on Egypt proper) it must be supposed that they had control of the transport route leading from southwestern Arabia by way of Elath (al-ʻAḳaba) to Gaza and Egypt and that their power certainly extended also to the southeast of Elath as far as Ḥawîla.
We very often find instances of a small tribe, or indeed of a clan, in Arabia with a similarly wide area of authority. For several centuries the family of Abu Rîš, which encamped south and southwest of Aleppo (Ḥaleb), controlled the great transport route leading from Aleppo through northeastern Arabia as far as Babylonia, and members of it were stationed at various points along that route.
The trade relations of Gaza and Egypt with southwestern Arabia were very brisk, and the trade caravans proceeding from Elath (al-ʻAḳaba) to Gaza were at the mercy of the Amalekites, through whose territory they passed. It was therefore likely that these caravans also acknowledged their authority on the road leading from Elath westward to Egypt as well as on that leading southeastward, or at least where the road skirted the seashore.
Saul’s army, especially that part of it which came from southern Judea where the settlements had long been afflicted by the Amalekites, was certainly eager for revenge; and therefore, not satisfied with defeating the king, it made an inroad upon other camps and flocks as far as the shore of the Red Sea. The naḥal in which Saul set his outpost is perhaps identical with the head of the valley forming the Egyptian border, and the duty of this outpost was to frustrate any attempt at flight into Egypt.
Saul did not destroy all the Amalekites. In 1 Samuel, 30: 1 ff., there is an account of their raids against various settlements in Judea, finally reaching as far as Ziklag, belonging to David, which they plundered, capturing the women and children there. David, having heard of this, pursued them across the stream Naḥal Besor and overtook them in the plain (1 Sam., 30: 17). He released the prisoners and slew the Amalekites, so that only four hundred of their young men escaped on camels. This