How could Haman be an Agagite if Saul destroyed the Amalekites?

The objection assumes that no Amalekites survived Saul’s campaign, but Samuel and Chronicles say plainly that many did. Saul struck those he found between Havilah and Shur. Within a few years David was raiding Amalekites again, an Amalekite army burned Ziklag and four hundred of its men escaped, and a remnant survived at Mount Seir until men of Simeon struck it, probably in Hezekiah’s reign (1 Samuel 27:8; 30:1, 17; 1 Chronicles 4:41–43). Even that blow need not have reached every Amalekite family living elsewhere. Agag himself may well have had sons before he was captured. ‘Agag’ also seems to have been the title of Amalek’s kings rather than one man’s name: Balaam, long before Saul, already speaks of a king “higher than Agag” (Numbers 24:7). Poole and Keil and Delitzsch take it so. A family that claimed descent from Amalek’s royal line could therefore have survived and been known as ‘Agagites’ long after Saul.

The book of Esther seems to invite this reading. It introduces Mordecai as a Benjamite whose line includes a Kish (Esther 2:5), the name of Saul’s father, and it sets him against Haman the Agagite, so that the old conflict between Saul and Agag is played out again. Josephus and the Aramaic Targum call Haman an Amalekite.

A place or clan name

Barnes, Ellicott and the Pulpit Commentary note that Haman’s own name and his family’s names look Persian (Esther 9:7–9). The Pulpit Commentary therefore thought descent from Agag scarcely possible, and took ‘Agagite’ to be a local name marking where he was born or brought up. The Greek Septuagint calls him instead ‘the Bugaean’. If that is right, the word has nothing to do with Saul’s Agag, and there is no difficulty to solve.

Whether ‘Agagite’ means descent from Agag or a Persian place or clan cannot be settled. Most Jewish and Christian interpreters have taken the first view; on either view the passages agree.