I was thinking of this passage:
1Samuel 15:3 Now go and smite Am'alek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.'
Working backward toward loving your enemies, this is a figure in pre-Incarnational time of the assault one must needs take up in post-Incarnatinal on the world to overcome it - eg to take nothing from it whatsoever, even what seems useful... The Jews, also in a figure, in that cast took some things, and some wives too, because the women were beautiful to look upon - With predictably evil results...
This is why the Sacred History of the Jews is such a departure, for God is moving in them... And He is giving them by their written history a prefigurement of the times to come after Christ... eg That history does not stand on its own ethical terms, but on its sacred meaning as a typos of living in the holy manner of Christ in obedience to the Father, and us similarly obedient... Again, one cannot understand what is written on its own, but only as a typos of something utterly different to come...
How can the Flood of Noah be understood except as a typos of Baptism?
Or the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites except as a type of Baptism?
Or the Baptism of Christ by John except as the fulfillment of this History?
How can we understand the captivity of Egypt and the Israelites escape from it through water as anything other than man living in the captivity of sin and his cleansing from that sin through water?
Arsenios