The War with Amalek at Rephidim

At Rephidim, soon after the Exodus, Amalek—a descendant of Esau—attacked Israel. He was defending no territory and demanding nothing: he struck the tail of the column, where the weary and the stragglers walked. Moses gave the battle to Joshua son of Nun, who appears here for the first time in the Torah, and himself climbed a hill with the staff in his hand. While Moses' hands were raised Israel prevailed; when they dropped, Amalek did. His hands grew heavy, so Aaron and Hur sat beside him and held them up until sunset. Joshua defeated Amalek, and God commanded that this be written in a book. Two commandments grew from the episode—to remember what Amalek did and to blot out his memory—read in synagogue on the Sabbath before Purim, since Haman is traditionally a descendant of Amalek. Amalek names a kind of cruelty that has no aim and no profit, and therefore cannot be negotiated with.

Here the chronologies differ not by years but by a century. Seder Olam Rabbah places the Exodus in 1313 BCE. The prevailing academic date is the thirteenth century, the time of Ramesses II: its firm anchor is the stele of Pharaoh Merneptah of 1208 BCE, the first mention of Israel outside the Tanakh, where Israel is already in Canaan. A minority of scholars holds to the fifteenth century, reckoning by the plain count of I Kings 6:1 — four hundred and eighty years from the Exodus to Solomon's Temple. The timeline shows the prevailing dating.