Amalekites

I think I am going to have a hard time reading through this part of the bible.

The Amalekites are now an extinct race. They were apparently of semitic stock, possibly from Esau's lineage. So you could possibly see this as a resurgence of the old Jacob - Esau rivalry. As the Israelites were travelling across the Amalekite stomping ground, they were ambushed by Amalekites , and in the process the Amalekites invited divine and non-divine retribution upon themselves. Since then the Amalekites have been branded as the ultimate enemy of Israel. Eventually, they were fully exterminated by the Simeonites.

This is the first documented sanctioned genocide. An earlier genocidal frenzy perpetrated by the sons of Jacob upon the Shechemites following Dinah's rape was not sanctioned by the patriarch.