concept
Amalekites
also: Амалекитяне, Amalekite
An ancient people of the Hebrew Bible, traditional enemies of Israel destroyed in wars under Saul and David; von Steinberg reaches for them, alongside the Philistines, as a figure for the construction lights stretching into the steppe darkness, which strike him as the encampment of some long-vanished, doomed nation.
Reading notes
- Lights §13 a camp of Amalekites or Philistines
Von Steinberg's first response to the lights reaches for two ancient enemies of biblical Israel, the Amalekites and the Philistines (see also loc 16, 183), imagining the line of construction lights as an encamped, doomed army from a vanished age -- an image the story returns to at its close as a figure for individual human thought, also scattered and going nowhere.