Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Chronicles 21:1
And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.
1. And Satan stood up against Israel ] In 2 Sam. “And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel,” a former occasion being at the time of the famine (2Sa 21:1). By Satan (“adversary”) is meant some hostile spiritual being, such as is mentioned in Job 1:6 ff.; Zec 3:1 ff., the very opposite in fact of a guardian angel such as the Michael of Dan 10:13; Dan 10:21; Dan 12:1.
and provoked ] R.V. and moved, as 2 Sam., the Heb. word being the same.
to number ] (cp. 1Ch 27:23-24) should be like the stars, beyond numbering.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
As the books of Scripture are arranged in our Version, Satan is here for the first time by name introduced to us. He appears not merely as an adversary who seeks to injure man from without, but as a Tempter able to ruin him by suggesting sinful acts and thoughts from within. In this point of view, the revelation made of him here is the most advanced that we find in the Old Testament.
The difficulty in reconciling the statement here, Satan provoked David, etc. with that of Samuel, the Lord moved David, etc. 2Sa 24:1 is not serious. All temptation is permitted by God. When evil spirits tempt us, they do so by permission (Job 1:12; Job 2:6; Luk 22:31, etc.). If Satan therefore provoked David to number the peopIe, God allowed him. And what God allows, He may be said to do. (Another view is maintained in the 2Sa 24:1 note).
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
1Ch 21:1-30
And Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to number Israel.
Under a spell
(Compare 2Pe 1:21):–
I. All the world seems to be under a spell or charm; inward influences move men as steam moves a ship. There am three spells.
1. One is that of parentage. The spell of a virtuous parentage influences its childrens children, like a good charm, for thousands of generations; but, on the other hand, the wickedness of a parent generally ceases to influence his offspring at, as the Second Commandment says, the third and fourth generation.
2. Another spell is the outward influence of our surroundings. Faithful parents, wise teachers, inspiring books, virtuous companions, healthy atmosphere, and suitable food will train up a child in the way God and men would have him go; but many a bright apprentice lad has been cursed by bad example.
3. The third spell is that of inward influences. One of these is said in the Bible to be the movement of the devil, and the other that of the holy God.
4. What can be greater than the spell which moves the human appetite to intoxicating drink? To obtain drink people will sometimes descend to the lowest degradation of meanness. Yes; the evil spell of the appetite for drink upon its victims is great and overpowering. Drink may be no temptation to you and me, but many people find it a spell which moves them as the tide and wind sometimes drives a feeble ship on the rocks. And what stronger spell can there be than the inclination to war between men, and churches, and nations?
5. Again, is there a stronger spell than the desire for money, the greed of gold? See how men under the spell of an insane ambition for wealth sometimes forget honour, and become actual thieves!
II. Now, let us consider the good spell over mankind. One of these is the heaven-born spell of true love; it is a most powerful influence for good. Thus love will reform the prodigal life. There is no stronger spell than true love; God is love. It is by the wisdom of love that He converts mankind. Gods object in winning men to love Him is that they may be prompted to self-denial in themselves and to do good works to others. (W. Birch.)
Davids sin and repentance
I. Davids sin.
1. Its occasion: pride and vainglory–that I may know it.
2. Its unseen but real source: Satan (1Sa 24:1).
II. The Lords displeasure because of his sin (1Ch 21:9-17).
III. The atonement for his sin, made on the site of the Lords house (chap. 20:1-2; 1Ki 6:1-38; 1Ki 7:1-51; 1Ki 8:1-66); as the foundation of the spiritual house (2Co 6:16-17; 1Pe 2:4-5; Eph 2:21-22). The temple therefore rests as it were on–
1. An atonement for sin (Rom 5:11).
2. Sin put away, 1Ch 21:17 (Dan 9:24).
3. Wrath averted by sacrifice (verse 16:26-27; 2Sa 24:16; Isa 42:21; 1Pe 1:18-19; 1Pe 2:24; Col 1:20; Col 2:14-15). (Clergymans Magazine.)
Davids self-confidence
I. The sin of David in numbering the people was self-confidence, pride in his own strength, and forgetfulness of the source of all his strength, even of God. It was the greater sin in him because he had had such marvellous, such visible, witnesses of Gods love, and care, and guidance. Past experience might and should have taught him that his strength was not in himself, but in his God.
II. The sins of pride, and self-confidence, and forgetfulness of God are only too common amongst ourselves. When men dwell securely, in full peace and health, they grow careless in religion. God is not much present with them; they seem sufficient of themselves to keep themselves and to make themselves happy. (R. D. B. Rawnsley.)
David numbering Israel
I. Man, through the devil, bringing tremendous evils on the world. Satan stood up, etc. The existence and influence of this grand chief of evil agencies are here, and everywhere through the Bible, stated as facts too well authenticated to require argument. He tempted the progenitor of the race; he assailed the Redeemer of the world; and he leads humanity captive by his will. He now had access, by means not stated, to the mind of the monarch of Israel. One might have thought that age, which had cooled in him the fires of life, would also have extinguished all the fires of worldly ambition; but Satan can rekindle the smouldering embers of evil within us: he did so now. The ambitious feeling awakened was not one of those passing waves of emotion that rise from the depths of the soul and break upon the shore and are no more; it took the form of an obstinate purpose.
1. That Satans influence on man, however successful, interferes not with mans personal responsibility. David was held responsible for the crime which the devil suggested to his mind. Great is the might of Satan, and great are the influences which he can bring to bear upon us; albeit he has no power to break down our wills by force, no power to coerce us into the wrong. We feel we are not mere engines in what we do, that our actions, good or bad, are our own.
2. That one mans sins may entail misery on thousands. It was so now: Davids sin brought death on thousands and agony into the heart of the nation.
3. That the Eternal has agents ever at hand to execute His judgments. (Homilist.)
Sinful counting
It is easy for us to rise in petulant indignation against David, and to declare that he ought not to have counted his men; but let us beware, lest in so doing we provoke the spirit of David to retort that it is possible for us to count our money so as to disclose the very motive and intention which in him we condemn as vicious. Yes there is an atheistical way of counting money. A man may go over coin by coin of his property, and look at it in a way which, being interpreted, signifies, this is my strength, this is my confidence; so long as I have all these coins it is impossible that I can get far wrong, or know much trouble, these will be my answer and defence in the day of accusation and adversity! (J. Parker, D. D.)
The impotence of numbers
Palestine fills a large place in history, but a very insignificant one on the map. Davids enemies were on every side, and they were all mighty in war. He had the sea to his west but did not command the coast. That (with its harbours of Tyre and Sidon) belonged to the Phoenicians, who overlapped him also on the north. To the east were the barriers of Moab; to the south the plains, cities, and hosts of the Philistines. We do not wonder that he wished to know upon what swords he had to depend. And yet we are told that it was an ungodly thing for him to number Israel.
I. What made this deed ungodly? The answer is that it was a departure from the place he held in the kingdom of God. He was losing the heart which could make him say, I am small and of no reputation, yet do I not forget Thy commandments. Such a mood, such a ranging of himself with neighbouring powers, was a grievous departure from Davids position as king of a chosen race. Think for a moment how unique that race was. Nothing is so wonderful in history as the survival of the Jews. They were set in the midst of mighty nations which far outnumbered them, but which all lost their place and power in the world while the Jews remained. And yet in the early days of this race they were in danger of being spoilt, and really degraded, by an attempt to set themselves on the level of the nations around. Davids act was a forgetfulness of, a departure from, Gods purpose. In seeking to realise his material resources, and count the swords which he could draw, he so far gave up that unseen vital force, which distinguished his people the most, and descended to the meaner level on which those around him took their stand.
II. What is the lesson to be learnt from this incident? That in the conduct of society and of our lives, dependence on mere numbers may prove disastrous.
1. In national economy. The consent and unanimity of a thousand fools does not render the folly of one man harmless; it may arm it with the power to do a thousand-fold more harm. We should be specially cautious in finding our course by that weathercock public opinion.
2. On a small as well as a large social scale. A prominent tendency to-day is to uphold the value of company and co-operation. In many respects this is well. Union is strength. But along with this may grow up a new tyranny. In passing from a selfish individualism to the recognition of a righteous socialism, we are in danger of having our personal convictions overridden. In presence of all the associations, societies, and committees in the world, we must not forget that some of the greatest things the world owns and cherishes, have taken their beginning and drawn their power from solitary source, some halfhidden spring which the crowd would pass by or trample down. The Bible would point to Noah, Daniel, and Job, and above all to the lonely cross.
3. In the religious life. No persuasion may be taken as true because it is accepted even by all. There was a time when the whole world believed that the sun moved round the earth. The great convictions and changes in history are irrespective of numbers. They come like little seeds which spread until they cover the land. Faith in numbers is a slavery worse than Egyptian, which shows itself in the discharge of our business and the profession of our faith. It is the deadly hindrance to which David exposed himself and his people. It is the temptation which besets us in the formation of our opinions and the doing of our work. We are all tempted to number the people. It is of the first importance that we should be true to the voice of our Father in heaven, who never leaves His children to walk alone if they will only take His hand. (Harry Jones.)
Census reflections
I. References to and reflections on two official numberings of the children of Israel (Num 1:26.).
II. Some general reflections on our national census.
1. The number of inhabitants of England and Wales at this moment is definite.
2. The number of the living inhabitants at this moment on the earth is definite.
3. The number of individuals who compose the whole human race is definite.
4. The number of the elect, or of those who shall ultimately be saved is definite.
Application: I would address–
1. Those who were numbered at the last census.
2. I would call to your remembrance those who have appeared and again disappeared during this interval.
3. The object of numbering suggests consolation. The very hairs of your head are all numbered, this is one of the sweetest pledges of our heavenly Fathers personal care over us.
4. It also suggests warning. Lord, let me know mine end and the number of my days. For what purpose? That I may know how frail I am. (W. Bramley Moore, M. A.)
Man, through God, arresting the great evils that have come upon the world
1. Profound contrition for sin. And David said unto God, I have sinned greatly, because I have done this thing; but now, I beseech Thee, do away with the iniquity of Thy servant, for I have done very foolishly. In Samuel it is said, Davids heart smote him. His conscience was aroused to a sense of his crime and became his chastiser. It allowed him to make no excuse; it prevented him from charging the crime even on the devil who tempted him. I have sinned greatly, I have done this thing, Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered? Even I it is that have sinned and done evil indeed. Conscience, the deepest power within us, ever vindicates our personality, our freedom, our responsibility. An awakened conscience detaches us from the universe, from all, and places us as guilty personalities in conscious contact with Him who is the Eternal Judge of right and wrong. The first step to true prayer is this.
2. Unbounded trust in God. When Jehovah, through Gad, Davids seer, proposed to the monarch the choice of one of three judgments–famine, war, or pestilence–what was Davids reply? I am in a great strait: let me fall into the hand of the Lord; for very great are His mercies: but let me not fall into the hand of man. His sin had consisted in some measure in placing trust in men; why else did he require a census? Was it not because he thought that numbers were power for defence and conquest? That confidence is gone now, and God appears to him as the only object of trust. Wonderful trust is this. When all things go well and fortune smiles, when providence showers its blessings upon our path, skirting our way with verdure and flowers, we may feel some trust in Him; but when all is dreary, dark, and tempestuous, when we see, as David saw, in the black heavens the destroying angel with a sword drawn in his hands about to smite us, then to trust Him is to have a trust of the highest sort.
3. An atoning self-sacrificing benevolence.
(1) With a generosity rejoicing in sacrifice, he rears an altar. He was divinely commanded to rear an altar unto the Lord on the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
(2) With a soul benevolently oblivious of all personal interest he pleads with heaven.
1. The solemnity of mans existence on this earth. Man here is the subject and organ of spiritual and invisible agents. The same man, as in the case of David, might be the organ of the devil and the organ of God. Under the influence of the devil, David became proud and rebellious, incurring the displeasure of his Maker and bringing ruin on his country; under the influence of God, he became profoundly contrite, trustful, and most benevolently prayerful; arresting the progress of evil and securing again for his country the mercy of Heaven. How terribly solemn is our life!
2. The ruinous and restorative dispositions in man. Selfish pride and self-sacrificing prayerfulness are the two grand dispositions which David displays in this portion of his history; the former was at once the product and instrument of the devil, bringing ruin upon his country; the latter was the product and instrument of God, counteracting the evils. (Homilist.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER XXI
David is tempted by Satan to take the numbers of the people of
Israel and Judah, 1, 2.
Joab remonstrates, but the king is determined, and Joab pleads
in vain, 3, 4.
He returns, and delivers in the number to the king, but reckons
not Levi and Benjamin, 5.
The Lord is displeased, and sends Gad to offer David his choice
of three great national calamities; famine, war, or pestilence,
6-12.
David submits himself to God, and a pestilence is sent, which
destroys seventy thousand, 13, 14.
At David’s intercession the destroying angel is restrained at
the threshing-floor of Ornan, 15-17.
He buys the piece of ground, builds an altar to the Lord and
offers sacrifices, and the plague is stayed, 18-30.
NOTES ON CHAP. XXI
Verse 1. And Satan stood up against Israel] 2Sa 24:1, &c.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Satan stood up, Heb. stood, to wit, before the Lord and his tribunal to accuse David and Israel, and to beg Gods permission to tempt David to number the people. Standing is the accusers posture before mens tribunals; and consequently the Holy Scripture (which useth to speak of God, and of the things of God, after the manner of men, to bring them down to our capacities) elsewhere represents Satan in this posture, as 1Ki 22:21; Zec 3:1. And so this agrees with 2Sa 24:1, where the Lord is said to move David, i.e. to give Satan commission or permission to move him; for otherwise God tempteth no man, Jam 1:13. But of this, and of this whole chapter, and of the variations and seeming contradictions between this narrative and that in Samuel, see my notes on 2Sa 24.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1. Satan stood up againstIsraelGod, by withdrawing His grace at this time from David(see on 2Sa 24:1), permitted thetempter to prevail over him. As the result of this successfultemptation was the entail of a heavy calamity as a punishment fromGod upon the people, it might be said that “Satan stood upagainst Israel.”
number IsraelIn theact of taking the census of a people, there is not only no evil, butmuch utility. But numbering Israelthat people who were to becomeas the stars for multitude, implying a distrust of the divinepromise, was a sin; and though it had been done with impunity in thetime of Moses, at that enumeration each of the people had contributed”half a shekel towards the building of the tabernacle,”that there might be no plague among them when he numbered them (Ex30:12). Hence the numbering of that people was in itself regardedas an undertaking by which the anger of God could be easily aroused;but when the arrangements were made by Moses for the taking of thecensus, God was not angry because the people were numbered for theexpress purpose of the tax for the sanctuary, and the money which wasthus collected (“the atonement money,” Ex30:16) appeased Him. Everything depended, therefore, upon thedesign of the census [BERTHEAU].The sin of David numbering the people consisted in its being eitherto gratify his pride to ascertain the number of warriors he couldmuster for some meditated plan of conquest; or, perhaps, more likelystill, to institute a regular and permanent system of taxation, whichhe deemed necessary to provide an adequate establishment for themonarchy, but which was regarded as a tyrannical and oppressiveexactionan innovation on the liberty of the peoplea departurefrom ancient usage unbecoming a king of Israel.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
“And Satan stood up against Israel, and incited David to number Israel.” The mention of Satan as the seducer of David is not to be explained merely by the fact that the Israelites in later times traced up everything contrary to God’s will to this evil spirit, but in the present case arises from the author’s design to characterize David’s purpose from the very beginning as an ungodly thing.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Giants Subdued. | B. C. 1017. |
1 And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel. 2 And David said to Joab and to the rulers of the people, Go, number Israel from Beer-sheba even to Dan; and bring the number of them to me, that I may know it. 3 And Joab answered, The LORD make his people a hundred times so many more as they be: but, my lord the king, are they not all my lord’s servants? why then doth my lord require this thing? why will he be a cause of trespass to Israel? 4 Nevertheless the king’s word prevailed against Joab. Wherefore Joab departed, and went throughout all Israel, and came to Jerusalem. 5 And Joab gave the sum of the number of the people unto David. And all they of Israel were a thousand thousand and a hundred thousand men that drew sword: and Judah was four hundred threescore and ten thousand men that drew sword. 6 But Levi and Benjamin counted he not among them: for the king’s word was abominable to Joab.
Numbering the people, one would think, was no bad thing. Why should not the shepherd know the number of his flock? But God sees not as man sees. It is plain it was wrong in David to do it, and a great provocation to God, because he did it in the pride of his heart; and there is no sin that has in it more of contradiction and therefore more of offence to God than pride. The sin was David’s; he alone must bear the blame of it. But here we are told,
I. How active the tempter was in it (v. 1): Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to do it. Is is said (2 Sam. xxiv. 1) that the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David to do it. The righteous judgments of God are to be observed and acknowledged even in the sins and unrighteousness of men. We are sure that God is not the author of sin–he tempts no man; and therefore, when it is said that he moved David to do it, it must be explained by what is intimated here, that, for wise and holy ends, he permitted the devil to do it. Here we trace this foul stream to its foundation. That Satan, the enemy of God and all good, should stand up against Israel, is not strange; it is what he aims at, to weaken the strength, diminish the numbers, and eclipse the glory of God’s Israel, to whom he is Satan, a sworn adversary. But that he should influence David, the man of God’s own heart to do a wrong thing, may well be wondered at. One would think him one of those whom the wicked one touches not. No, even the best saints, till they come to heaven, must never think themselves out of the reach of Satan’s temptations. Now, when Satan meant to do Israel a mischief, what course did he take? He did not move God against them to destroy them (as Job, ch. ii. 3), but he provoked David, the best friend they had, to number them, and so to offend God, and set him against them. Note, 1. The devil does us more mischief by tempting us to sin against our God than he does by accusing us before our God. He destroys none but by their own hands, 2. The greatest spite he can do to the church of God is to tempt the rulers of the church to pride; for none can conceive the fatal consequences of that sin in all, especially in church-rulers. You shall not be so, Luke xxii. 26.
II. How passive the instrument was. Joab, the person whom David employed, was an active man in public business; but to this he was perfectly forced, and did it with the greatest reluctance imaginable.
1. He put in a remonstrance against it before he began it. No man more forward that he in any thing that really tended to the honour of the king or the welfare of the kingdom; but in this matter he would gladly be excused. For, (1.) It was a needless thing. There was not occasion at all for it. God had promised to multiply them, and he needed not question the accomplishment of that promise. They were all his servants, and he needed not doubt of their loyalty and affection to him. Their number was as much his strength as he could desire. (2.) It was a dangerous thing. In doing it he might be a cause of trespass to Israel, and might provoke God against them. This Joab apprehended, and yet David himself did not. The most learned in the laws of God are not always the most quick-sighted in the application of those laws.
2. He was quite weary of it before he had done it; for the king’s word was abominable to Joab, v. 6. Time was when whatever king David did pleased all the people, 2 Sam. iii. 36. But now there was a general disgust at these orders, which confirmed Joab in his dislike of them, so that, though the produce of this muster was really very great, yet he had no heart to perfect it, but left two tribes unnumbered (1Ch 21:5; 1Ch 21:6), two considerable ones, Levi and Benjamin, and perhaps was not very exact in numbering the rest, because he did not do it with any pleasure, which might be one occasion of the difference between the sums here and 2 Sam. xxiv. 9.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
see note on: 2Sa 24:1
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
CRITICAL NOTES.] The events here given appear in 2 Samuel 24, where the manner in which the census was taken is fully described, which took Joab nine months and twenty days. This narrative is condensed.
1Ch. 21:1-6.Numbering of people. Satan, the Lord in Sam. Both had their hand in the workGod by permission, Satan by suggestion [Bp. Hall]. Provoked, stirred up. Trespass (1Ch. 21:3), the results of trespassi.e., punishment. 1Ch. 21:4. A summary of five verses of 2Sa. 24:4-8, which give route taken by Joab and assistants, and time occupied to their return. 1Ch. 21:5. Number of all lists added together. Discrepancy not easy to explain. It seems far better to explain, with most commentators, that the numbers have, in one passage or the other (or possibly in both), suffered corruption [Speak. Com.]. 1Ch. 21:6. Levi, following precedent in Num. 1:47-49; Benj., because Joab desired to frustrate kings intention, or because taken on former occasion (ch. 1Ch. 7:6-11), and register preserved in archives of the tribe.
1Ch. 21:7-8.Gods displeasure. These words an anticipation of 1Ch. 21:14-15; are placed here, interrupting the narrative, to show that Joabs artifice was not successfulit did not avert Gods wrath. David was punished for his intention, though that intention was not completely carried out by his subordinate [Speak. Com.].
1Ch. 21:9-13.Gods message. Seer, prophet elsewhere; perhaps a pupil of David (2Sa. 22:8), and successor of Samuel in office. Offer, stretch out to thee. Choose, take to thee. Three things, famine, sword, or pestilence, which often recur in Scripture (Deu. 28:21-25; Rev. 6:4-8). This beautiful agreement in the numbers is completely destroyed by the reading seven [Keil]. Strait, one form of the evil must be taken, cannot be avoided. Experience taught him which to choose.
1Ch. 21:14-17.God sends pestilence. Its form not given; results most sweeping. At length reached the capital. Angel to destroy it. Ornan and his sons hid themselves on the apparition of the angel, but came out to welcome David. The king saw the vision, appeared with the elders in the garb and assumed the attitude of penitence, confessed their sins, and deprecated the wrath of God.
1Ch. 21:18-22.David builds an altar. Command to build and choice of site directly from God, through an angel, to Gad. Altar marked the site for the future temple. Threshing-floor, the level summit of elevated ground on eastern ridge on which Jerusalem was situated.
1Ch. 21:23-26.David buys the threshing-floor. In Eastern style of politeness, Ornan offers the whole to David, as Ephron to Abraham (Genesis 23). 1Ch. 21:25. Gave value of the place here; that of threshing-floor and oxen in Sam. The one writer states the matter of present interest, the other records the matter of permanent moment [Murphy].
1Ch. 21:27-30.David sacrifices on the altar. Sacrificed. The whole code of regulations for offerings given in Leviticus 1 –
7. By fire, answer given on critical occasions (Lev. 9:24; 1Ki. 18:24-38). Sacrifice accompanied with cessation of plague. There (1Ch. 21:28), regarding that spot as sacred. The altar of burnt-offering still at Gibeon, where he could not go in present emergency, for fear of the angel. After this divine institution Mount Moriah (2Ch. 3:1) became a place of lawful sacrifice [cf. Murphy]. David knowing that by sacrifice on this altar he had caused the angel to stay his hand, was afraid to transfer his offerings elsewhere, lest the angel should resume his task, and pestilence again break out [Speak. Com.].
HOMILETICS
THE WICKED CENSUS.1Ch. 21:1-6
What wrong in numbering the people? A shepherd likes to know the number of his sheep. A census had been commanded and taken in the wilderness (Num. 1:1-2) It was customary with other kings, that they might know what an army to muster for war. Judging from Scripture accounts, we learn the following truths
I. It was an act instigated by mysterious influence. Supernatural influence. Satan the adversary was permitted in some way to move David. God is said in Scripture to do what he suffers or permits. Mans free will not forced nor destroyed by the Divine will. The web of human actions is very complex. The great Mover rules over all, but many undermovers intervene in the drama of life; so that it is not more difficult to foretell the course of the weather than of the will. Yet sin is mans own act, and the punishment of a righteous God presupposes its guilt.
II. It was an act of sinful pride. Enemies subdued, his rule undisputed, yet not content. Wanted to ascertain and boast in the military strength of the people, that I may know the number of the people (2Sa. 24:2; cf. 1Ch. 27:23). This clear also from the fact that Joab delayed as long as possible carrying it into Benjamin, in order not to arouse the insurrectionary spirit of this tribe, which could not forget the leadership it had possessed under Saul [Hengs.]. Kings proud, prosperous, and ambitious, often vain, confident in their own greatness, boastful of the number of their soldiers and the resources of their subjects. David remarkably successful, and thought himself invincible.
III. It was an act of treason against God. Israel were Gods people, not Davids to count and number as he thought fit. Disobedient to take a census without Gods command; perversion of Gods favours to turn them into schemes of self-aggrandizement, and the purposes of God, according to the laws of justice and moral order, cannot be obscured or hindered without impunity by proud acts and ambitious plans of kings. Davids sin akin to that of Nebuchadnezzar, whom Jehovah taught by bitter experience to know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men.
IV. It was an act of peril to the nation. Joab saw this and remonstrated, Why will he be a cause of trespass to Israel? It might endanger the liberty of the people, become a State device for heavy taxation, and would be sure to bring divine displeasure. The apprehension of a Nemesis on an overweening display of prosperity, says Dean Stanley, if not inconsistent with the highest revelations of the Divine nature in the gospel, pervades all ancient, especially all Oriental religions. Presentiments often forebode evil. Be sure your sin will find you out.
V. It was an act of obstinate persistence. Joabs rebuke had no effect upon David. Foolish pride puffed up, and he neither took the counsel of God nor the advice of friends. With stubborn selfwill he would have his own waythe kings word prevailed against Joab. Advice may demand hard and unpleasant things, involve humiliation and confession of mistake, and be very different from the words we expected. Hence disregard to warnings, persistence in evil, and ultimately inevitable sufferings. The way of a fool is right in his own eyes; but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise.
THE PROGRESS OF TRUE PENITENCE.1Ch. 21:7-13
In these words a beautiful picture of Davids repentancesuccessive steps of restoration to God, and the conduct of a real penitent under the chastening hand of God. I. In signs of Gods displeasure. God was displeased (1Ch. 21:7). Displeasure revealed to vindicate God, aid us in apprehending our responsibility to him, and to secure right mind for due restoration. II. In the power of an awakened conscience. Davids heart smote him (Sam.). The bitter thoughts of conscience born. Suggestions from God; proofs that we are not left alone, nor hardened beyond hope. III. In the penitent confession of sin. Accuses himself, and is deeply grieved that others are involved in his sin (1Ch. 21:17). I am guilty; these sheep, what have they done? He is so penetrated with sense of guilt, and with sympathy for his innocent people, that he desires God to send judgments on him and his house alone, and spare the people as his flock (these sheep). IV. In earnest prayer for pardon. Take away the iniquity of thy servant (Sam.). This only his resource. Acknowledgment of guilt, and entreaty for divine forgiveness, a proof of true state of heart. V. In the revelation of Gods will. The inner cry met by outer word. Gad announced punitive righteousness (1Ch. 21:9). This without human means or occasion. God ever ready to give light and guidance, but in his way and time. VI. In humble submission to Gods will when known. He bows under divine judgments, yet with hope of delivering mercy.
THE AWFUL JUDGMENTS.1Ch. 21:11-15
The judgment descended in the form of a tremendous pestilencea death, as it is expressly termed in the original, like the Black Death of the Middle Ages. Appearing in the heat of the summer months, aggravated by the greatness of the population which had occasioned the census, spreading with the rapidity of an Oriental disorder in crowded habitations, it flew from end to end of the country in three days, and at last approached Jerusalem. The new capital, the very heart of the nation, the peculiar glory of Davids reign, seemed to be doomed to destruction [Dean Stanley].
I. Judgments entailed by one mans sin. David responsible chiefly for its results. Mans power to entail tremendous evils or greatest blessings upon others. Seventy thousand human beings cut off by judgment. What deaths lie at our door!
II. Judgments easily prepared for execution. God has agents ever ready to do his will. Famine, sword, and pestilence, set in order, waiting the command to attack, and fearful in results. The terrors of God do set themselves in (military) array against me (Job. 6:4).
III. Judgments sent according to human preference. Choose thee. Wonderful, mysterious offer! Not often done; would not always be consistent with Gods justice. We are not always able, enlightened enough to choose. This a special case, only a temporary fall from loyalty, and the design was the restoration to full trust. God wise and merciful.
IV. Judgments arrested by earnest prayer. Room in the purposes of God and in the operations of nature for prayer. Natural law interferes not with prayer and human freedom. Who knows what judgments may be averted, mitigated, or turned into blessings, by earnest petition? Scripture and ecclesiastical history full of illustrations. More things are wrought by prayer than the world dreams of [Tennyson].
DAVIDS CHOICE.1Ch. 21:11-13
David offered three things. To show him and the world that the evils denounced were no casual calamities, nor effects of any natural cause, he was permitted to choose which should be immediately inflicted. Regard the choice
I. As the result of an awakened conscience. I am in a great strait. The natural feeling of one under the terrors of God; the voice of conscience in anguish and torture. What must I do to be saved?
II. As the revelation of the principle of Christian life. Famine would leave Israel dependent upon others for food; defeat, on the mercy of the heathen; in pestilence, they would have God only to deal with. God the only refuge; no human power could defend. He left himself confidently with God. Thus gave a public testimony that it is vain to trust in man; that God only is supreme, gracious, and wise.
III. As a picture of future doom to all. A choice for us to make. We must fall into Gods hands by voluntary submission now, or by compulsion at last. Decide to-day, before choice is taken away. Now, therefore, advise thyself (1Ch. 21:12).
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
1Ch. 21:2. Know it. But what needs that, now that there was a general peace or truce with all nations? Curiosity, it was at least; yea, it was pride and creature confidence that pricked David on to this numbering of the people, and made him so peremptory. This Augustus Csar might do for his pleasure, and carry it away without punishment (Luk. 2:1). Not so David. God will take that from others what he will not bear with in his own (Amo. 3:2). The Philistines might cart the ark, but David smarted for so doing [Trapp].
1Ch. 21:6. The interrupted survey.
1. Joab from policy did not number all the people. The work grew tedious, and Joab did not relish it, for the kings word was abominable to Joab.
2. But Gods providence seen in result. Other agency beside mans recognised. Two tribes not numbered, partly because Levi was devoted to His service, and Benjamin had become the least of all tribes (Judges 21); and partly because God foresaw that they would remain faithful to the house of David in the division of the tribes, and therefore would not have them diminished [Jamieson].
Theres a Divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.
1Ch. 21:9-10. Gad an emblem of a true minister. His message wasI. Divine. So is the gospel message, of which there is evidence drawn from
1. The facts of history.
2. Its congruity with the spiritual constitution of man.
3. Experience of those who feel its power. II. An appeal to choice: Advise thyself.
1. You can reject it.
2. You can accept it. III. Was to be accounted for: What word, &c.
1. Gad was responsible for its delivery.
2. David was responsible for its results [Bib. Mus.].
1Ch. 21:8. Foolishly. He thought at first he had done very wisely; now he seeth his error, and disclaimeth it. We had before his contrition, confession, and supplication, all which make up his repentance for sin; here we have his conversion or reformation, which is his repentance from sin, his amendment of life [Trapp].
1Ch. 21:13. Into the hand of the Lord. The reason for this choice was partly his confidence in Gods great goodness; partly because the other judgments, especially the sword, would have been more dishonourable, not only to David, but also to God and his people; and partly because he, having sinned himself, thought it just to choose a plague, to which he was as obnoxious as his people; whereas he had better defences for himself against the sword and famine than they had. True, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God! Fearful indeed for those who have, by their impenitence, shut themselves from his mercy. But a penitent dares cast himself into Gods hand, knowing that his mercies are great [Benson]. The compelled choice of punitive infliction, and the dread alternatives. The Divine mercy amid calamity. There is here a Contrast between Divine and Human Chastisements. Strange that men, who are so near us, should be less trustworthy than God, who is unseen. Men treat us worse, God better, than we have deserved. Davids preference is justified when we consider
1. The harsh judgments men pronounce on each other.
2. The harsh treatment of the guilty who are in mens power.
3. The absence of sympathetic kindness in human warfare.
4. That when God punishes he does so in righteousness.
5. That in the treatment of the guilty God always shows mercy. The lessons are
1. Submission to God.
2. Hopeful trust. Davids choice.
1. The option declined. Had too much of his own will already. Refers it back to God and resigns himself into his hands.
2. What are the reasons for this?
(1) Great are his mercies. The declaration of a truth, the ground of hope, and the testimony of experience.
(2) Not into the hand of man. The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. Trust in man destroys freedom, dishonours character, and disappoints hope.
HOMILETICS
DAVID AND ISRAEL.1Ch. 21:17-27
The sad circumstances of David and Israel. Davids wisdom in giving himself into the hands of God. Gods hand is safest to hold the rodthe hand of a king, master, father.
I. The progressive course of sin.
1. Temptation (1Ch. 21:1). Satan the black fountain of all transgress. David not conscious that Satan was so near. Insidiousness of Satanic influence.
2. Transgression (1Ch. 21:2). In face of warning (1Ch. 21:3). Its desperate folly seen by others (1Ch. 21:6). The deadening, hardening power of any lust.
3. Punishment (1Ch. 21:10-12). As soon will the magnet escape the influence of the pole, the sea the influence of the moon, an atom the binding force of gravitation, as the sinner escape punishment. Be sure thy sin.
II. The progressive course of reconciliation with God.
1. The messenger. Gods afflictive stroke (1Ch. 21:7). The prophet Gad (1Ch. 21:9). Every person or circumstance that reproves is Gods messenger. God smote. The Lord spake to Gad, Go, &c.
2. Conviction (1Ch. 21:8). The true convict always confesses, never excuses. Not only owns the sin, but acknowledges its greatness. Text. It is I, &c.
3. Penitence (1Ch. 21:16). Sackcloth, emblem of deepest grief; fell upon their faces; evidence of profound humiliation and utter prostration before God.
4. Acceptance. Expressly permitted to worship (1Ch. 21:18). Consciously and visibly accepted in worship (1Ch. 21:26). Delivered from the dread visitation.
5. Grateful acknowledgment (1Ch. 21:24). Would not offer costless worship. Would not offer cheap worshipfull price. We are to be living sacrifices.
III. Underlying truths.
1. Though man be tempted, sin is his own act. Satan suggested, provoked David, yet the sin was Davids. He might have had resisting strength.
2. Our sins affect others. How many widows and orphans! How much anguish and unutterable misery through Davids sin! Any mans sins are a widespread and far-reaching curse. Text. David sinned: these sheep were terribly smitten.
3. Though sin be pardoned, it leaves terrible scars behind. In Davids memory. Gaps in the families and homes of the people. Avoidance of sin infinitely better than pardon. Christ the great and only sin-healer. O Holy Ghost, draw, &c. [R. Berry].
THE ANGEL ARRESTED.1Ch. 21:15-17
The infliction of pestilence briefly noticed, without account of duration or ravages; but minute description of visible appearance and menacing attitude of the angel. Notice
I. The errand of the angel. to destroy it. Even angels ready executioners of Gods judgments. Sodom and Jerusalem; destruction of firstborn in Egypt and of Sennacheribs army. Unseen agents often sent within sphere of things seen, to impress the heart through the senses and convince of Gods ways. But Christ came not to destroy mens lives, &c.
II. The destiny of the angel. Pestilence had swept the country, now surrounded the capital. The centre of glory and empire, seat of the palace and the ark apparently doomed! God strikes at our dearest objects to chastise our sins and bring us to himself.
III. The attitude of the angel. A drawn sword in his hand. Indicative of wrong and determination to punish it. Giving opportunity to intercede for the city. God ready to punish, yet waits to be gracious. This attitude warns, yet encourages.
IV. The command to the angel. Enough. God knows exactly how far to go, how much is required to bring us to submission. Stay now thine hand. Prayer has been offered and the design accomplished. The Lord repented him of the evil, changed his method of procedure and stayed the plague. In this very spot Abraham countermanded from slaying his son. For the sake of the great Sacrifice and Intercessor our lives are preserved from destruction.
THE ALTAR BUILT AND THE PLAGUE STAYED.1Ch. 21:14-26
Here a national calamity traceable to Davids sin, and that sin apparently of minor magnitude. But what evil in it? It was the result of pride and vainglory, to see the army he could raise, and to which he trusted instead of God. It was ingratitude for past deliverances, &c., hence the wrath of God kindled. David soon became conscious of guilt. A prophet sent to announce Gods will, and choice had to be made. Observe
I. A fearful evil. The evil
1. Was the plague. Some fearful disease, swiftly mortal; for in nine hours, at most, some think 70,000 died. How awful! and beyond the power of human skill to deliver. Sudden, terrible, fatal!
2. An angel was the messenger employed. Now ready to fulfil his commission in Jerusalem, but God stayed him.
3. David beheld the angel and interceded for the people. A beautiful instance of lofty, conscientious feeling. Generous and magnanimous.
II. The divine remedy. An altar must be built, sacrifice offered, &c.
1. Human guilt was acknowledged.
2. God was glorified. Both his justice and wrath in punishing, and his great mercy in staying his judgments.
3. No doubt the typical end of sacrifices would be realised. Looking on to the coming of the Lamb of God. For both sin, evil, and remedy may direct us to the great subject of atonement for a perishing world. Besides, this altar finely symbolizes the erection of houses for the worship of God. For, through the divine agency of gospel truth, by these the plague of the world is removed. Ignorance displaced by knowledge, profligacy by moral order, irreligion by godliness, unbelief and death by bestowment of salvation and eternal life.
III. A generous proposal. Altar to be erected at a given spot. Nothing in religion left to fancy. David states the case clearly to Ornan. Then came the proposal.
1. This offer was beyond what David stated. I give thee oxen, &c.
2. It was prompt, the result of generous and pious resolution.
3. It was pressed on David.
4. It was followed with prayer (2Sa. 24:23). How pious and noble! A finer specimen of godly liberality never was exhibitedthe act, the manner, the spirit, the prayer!
IV. A noble and self-sacrificing spirit. Ornan did well. David did better. Selfishness or formality would have accepted it. David desired the offering.
1. To be his own. The guilt had been his; so the repentance, so the fruit.
2. He valued his religion more than his wealth. So he paid full worth for the place. This act of Davids the opposite of two classes in our day
(1) Those who wish others to pay for their religion;
(2) those who wish to have religion without cost. Learn
1. The frailty of good men. David numbered the people.
2. The necessary results of sinmisery and ruin.
3. The only way of averting it. By repentance, coming to the one sacrifice on the only perpetual altar reared for the worlds guilt.
4. The fruit of a sanctified heart. Holy zeal and liberality in the cause of God [J. Burns, D.D.].
THE PROPITIATION.1Ch. 21:18-27
Taking the altar and sacrifice as means of propitiation to reconcile, to restore man to God, we have an illustration of the atonement of Christ in its design, method, and results.
I. The moral condition which it is designed to meet.
1. Outward difficulties. Offence committed and punishment due. Gods anger must be taken away; his justice displayed. Man cannot remove penalty, dissolve law, nor deliver himself. In the work of Christ claims of justice satisfied, obstacles to pardon removed, demands of moral government met. Jehovah a just God and a Saviour.
2. Inward feelings. Mans guilt creates fear and distance. I was afraid and I hid myself. He was afraid because of the sword. Gods love in Christ represents him unrevengeful, near and ready to forgive. The Holy Spirit renews the disposition, enlightens the mind, and takes away fear. Thus distance is destroyed, guilt overcome, and God and man reconciled.
II. The provision made for this condition. With the distinct understanding that we simply glance at one aspect of this profound subject, we assert that to make atonement for sin required great cost. Not by the blood of goats and calves, not by gold and silver are we redeemed, but by the precious blood of Christ. Christ himself was the sacrifice. Scripture and history rich in examples of benevolence and self-sacrifice; none like this. The gift of Gods beloved Son more costly than worlds upon worlds; inestimable, incomprehensive. Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.
III. The results which it accomplished.
1. Danger warded off. When David repented of sin, God repented of judgment; plague arrested; destroying angel commanded to stay his hand (1Ch. 21:15) and sheath his sword (1Ch. 21:27).
2. Sacrifices accepted. God answered from heaven by fire (1Ch. 21:26), to signify that anger was turned away and God propitious. So the Lord was entreated for the land, and the plague was stayed from Israel. This typical of the sinners reconciliation and acceptance with God through Christ. He (himself) is the propitiation (propitiatory sacrifice) for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world (1Jn. 2:2).
THE COST AND SELF-SACRIFICE OF RELIGION.1Ch. 21:22-26
Sacrifice was to be presented; specific directions were given. David promptly obeyed. A generous scene of altercation takes place. A pious and self-sacrificing decision expressed by David. Acceptable religion is a religion of self-sacrificea religion of cost; and the cost must be personally paid. In illustration of this, contemplate the subject.
I. In reference to the spiritual expansion of the intellectual powers. Theology, the divine science of religion, one of boundless extent. The greatness, number, variety, and importance of the subjects. Godhis works, his government, his will. The Lord Jesus Christthe gospel, eternal life. To understand there must be reading, study, reflection. A course of divine trainingreligious education. We may be Christians without much knowledge, but our honour, glory, felicity, to abound in knowledge. The cost must be paid, in the attainment. The astronomer pays it, the man of literature, so the Christian.
II. Apply the subject to the spiritual cultivation of the moral nature. The soul before conversion like a barren heath, or desert, arid, &c. It must be cultivated, ploughed, sown, tilled. Much labour needful. Evil habits to be abandoned. Holy habits to be formed. Virtues to be grafted in; graces to be cherished. Hence duties, toils, and spiritual efforts necessary. Hence the exhortations, Be diligent, &c., Work out your salvation, &c. Apply the subject
III. To the influence of self-denial in adorning the Christian profession. Self-denial not the abandonment of sin, &c., but surrendering even of what might be lawfully retained. Hence the case of eating flesh, &c., as given by the apostle (Rom. 14:1). Now our habits, costume, conversation, spirit, must all be sacrificed, if Gods glory and the good of others demand it. Our will sacrificed that Gods may be done. Apply the subject
IV. To the importance of usefulness in the cause of the Lord Jesus Christ. This one great end of conversion. I will bless thee and make thee a blessing, &c. First, the heart must be given to Christ; then life, talents, influence, time, wealth. If we will be useful, the cost must be paid; the law of self-sacrifice must rule us; ease, sordidness, &c., must be cast off. Brethren, I beseech you, by the mercies of God, &c. These cases illustrate the subject. But I give additional thoughts. Not only must the cost be paid, but paid
(1) In the right spirit. Not the spirit of ostentation for display; of self-righteousness for merit; of backwardness and grudgingly; but in humble, cheerful love to Christ. Felt to be a privilege as well as a duty. Need no force nor threatening. Not the whip, but the curb. As David in the text. Freely we have received, &c. In the language of the poet
Had I a thousand hearts to give,
Lord, they should all be thine.
(2) Observe, this cost paid in religion, is not equal to the demands of sin. Look at the sacrifice, the worldly, the proud, the sensual make. What money! what time! what energies! What peace! The way of transgressors is hard, and the end ruin.
(3) To pay this cost in the service of Christ, grace is both necessary and provided. Without Me ye can do nothing. My grace is sufficient, &c. Grace must inspire the desire, purpose, and motivegive the ability and elasticity. The grace of God is provided abundantly. It was found so by Abraham, Moses, David, Daniel, Paul. Our subject, then, should
1. Lead to examination. What has religion done for us? What have we done for it? What has it cost us? Have you the inward sense of Gods full favour? Have you the testimony that you please God?
2. It condemns two classes of persons. Those who wish others to pay for their religion, and those who wish to have a costless religion. Not so David. Forget not
3. That true religion is its own present reward. Peace, hope, and joy, now; hereafter, the glories of a blissful eternity. Let the spirit of the text ever dwell in you.
4. Address the sinner. Who is indifferent to religion altogether. Godliness is profitable unto all things, &c. [J. Burns, D.D.].
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
1Ch. 21:14-17. I. Judgments following sin. This a necessary, natural, and certain sequence. II. Judgments mixed with mercy.
1. Shortened in duration.
2. Ending in correction. Mercy rejoices over judgment.
(1) The penitent man casts himself into the arms of Gods mercy;
(2) Mercy falls into the arms of justice, in order to stay its blows; punitive justice must yield to mercy at the command of the Lord. It is enough: stay now thy hand [Lange].
1Ch. 21:16 to 1Ch. 20:1. Davids ready obedience.
2. Davids willingness to suffer alone.
3. Davids intercession for the people. Most people, when judgments are abroad, charge others with being the cause of them, so they can escape; but Davids penitent and public spirit was otherwise affected. As became a penitent he is severe upon his own faults, while he extenuates those of the people and intercedes? for them.
1Ch. 21:24. Full price. Apply to ministers and Sunday-school teachers in preparation for pulpit and class.
1Ch. 21:22-27. I. The altar purchased.
(1) By divine instructions. Concerning place, person, and purpose.
(2) By honourable transaction. In spirit of courtesy, generosity, and self-sacrifice. II. The altar accepted. Acceptance by fire, and hallowed by tokens of Gods presence. III. The altar perpetuated. Partly to meet Davids fears, also to fulfil Gods purpose. Reverence for Divine Being led him to stay at the place, to make additional offerings and seek favour by earnest prayer. God was gracious, approved and sanctioned. Mount Moriah became a place of lawful and continual sacrifice. Rear an altar unto the Lord!
(1) In obedience to the Lords command;
(2) With dedication of thyself, and what is thine, to the Lords honour;
(3) For the continual preservation of spiritual offerings, which are acceptable to the Lord; and
(4) For the reception of the highest gift of grace, peace with the propitiated God [Lange]. 1Ch. 21:1.
1. Davids sin.
2. Davids self-reproach, penitence, and confession.
3. Davids punishment.
4. Davids supplication and expiatory offering.
5. Davids forgiveness and restoration. How God meets the presumptuouness of his favoured ones.
(1) He comes upon them with the edge of the sword;
(2) His sword is not to kill, but to loose the chains of pride
(3) Where the sword of the Lord has done its work, there he builds his temple of peace [J. Disselhoff].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 21
1Ch. 21:2. The number. This attempt to take the census was not unnaturally suggested by the increase of his power, but it implied a confidence and pride akin to the spirit inculcated on the kings of the chosen people [Dean Stanley].
1Ch. 21:4. Kings word prevailed. Wisdom is gotten by hearkening to good counsel, for none are born so naturally (Job. 11:12). Many had proved wise if they had not thought themselves so [Bp. Hall]. There cannot be a more worthy improvement of friendship than in a fervent opposition to the sins of those we love [Ibid.].
1Ch. 21:9-15. Punishment. He that would be safe from the acts of evil must wisely avoid the occasions [Bp. Hall]. How hard a master he serves where the devil gives the employment, and shame is his entertainment, and sin is his work, and hell is his wages [Bp. J. Taylor]. Sinners labour in the very fire.
1Ch. 21:7. God was displeased.
But Providence will intervene
To throw His dark displeasure oer the scene [Cowper].
1Ch. 21:17. Plagued. The great design, both in judgment and mercies, is to convince us that there is none like the Lord our God; none so wise, so mighty, so good; no enemy so formidable, no friend so desirable, so valuable [Mt. Henry]. O God, I have made an ill use of thy mercies, if I have not learnt to be content with thy corrections [Bp. Hall]. How sweetly doth God dispose of all second causes, that while they do their own will they do his [Ibid.].
1Ch. 21:24-27. Full price. A bargain is sometimes as unmerciful as a robbery [Nicholls]. Kindness will dictate much in carrying on business which law cannot take cognizance of. It will preserve from the wretched practice of exclusive dealing, of punishing a man for his religion or politics by withholding custom; of making commerce the instrument of bigotry and exclusiveness, a practice which all condemn when they suffer from it, and all approve when they are advantaged by it. It will teach us to give a tender consideration to the cases of others, to treat inferiors with courtesy and gentleness, to pay respect to those whose circumstances make them apt to suspect unkindness, not to make a vigorous exaction of mere rights, to allow for unavoidable causes, and by studious care smooth the path of honest poverty [A. J. Morris].
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
LESSON TEN 2122
A MILITARY CENSUS AND A PLAGUE
13. DAVIDS MILITARY CENSUS AND ITS CONSEQUENCES (Chapter 21)
INTRODUCTION
The final serious mistake David made was this military census. God did not withhold judgment. Israel suffered. David repented and begged for Gods mercy. Preparing for the building of the Temple and charging Solomon with the responsibility of carrying out the plans occupied king Davids last days.
TEXT
1Ch. 21:1. And Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel. 2. And David said to Joab and to the princes of the people, Go, number Israel from Beer-sheba even to Dan; and bring me word, that I may know the sum of them. 3. And Joab said, Jehovah make his people a hundred times as many as they are: but, my lord the king, are they not all my lords servants; Why doth my lord require this thing? Why will he be a cause of guilt unto Israel? 4. Nevertheless the kings word prevailed against Joab. Wherefore Joab departed, and went throughout all Israel, and came to Jerusalem. 5. And Joab gave up the sum of the numbering of the people unto David. And all they of Israel were a thousand thousand and a hundred thousand men that drew sword; and Judah was four hundred three score and ten thousand men that drew sword. 6. But Levi and Benjamin counted he not among them; for the kings word was abominable to Joab. 7. And God was displeased with this thing; therefore he smote Israel. 8. And David said unto God, I have sinned greatly, in that I have done this thing: but now put away, I beseech thee, the iniquity of thy servant; for I have done very foolishly.
9. And Jehovah spake unto Gad, Davids seer, saying, 10. Go and speak unto David, saying, Thus saith Jehovah, I offer thee three things: choose thee one of them, that I may do it unto thee. 11. So Gad came to David, and said unto him, Thus saith Jehovah, Take which thou wilt: 12. either three years of famine; or three months to be consumed before thy foes, while the sword of thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of Jehovah, even pestilence in the land, and the angel of Jehovah destroying throughout all the borders of Israel, Now therefore consider what answer I shall return to him that sent me. 13. And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait: let me fall, I pray, into the hand of Jehovah; for very great are his mercies: and let me not fall into the hand of man. 14. So Jehovah sent a pestilence upon Israel; and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men. 15. And God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it: and as he was about to destroy, Jehovah beheld, and he repented him of the evil, and said to the destroying angel, It is enough; now stay thy hand. And the angel of Jehovah was standing by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. 16. And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of Jehovah standing between earth and heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces. 17. And David said unto God, Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered? Even I it is that have sinned and done very wickedly; but these sheep, what have the done; Let thy hand, I pray thee, O Jehovah my God, be against me, and against my fathers house; but not against they people, that they should be plagued.
18. Then the angel of Jehovah commanded Gad to say to David, that David should go up, and rear an altar unto Jehovah in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite. 19. And David went up at the saying of Gad, which he spake in the name of Jehovah. 20. And Ornan turned back, and saw the angel; and his four sons that were with him hid themselves. Now Ornan was threshing wheat. 21. And as David came to Ornan, Ornan looked and saw David, and went out of the threshing-floor, and bowed himself to David with his face to the ground. 22. Then David said to Ornan, Give me the place of this threshing-floor, that I may build thereon an altar unto Jehovah: for the full price shalt thou give it me, that the plague may be stayed from the people. 23. And Ornan said unto David, Take it to thee, and let my lord the king do that which is good in his eyes: lo, I give thee the oxen for burnt-offerings, and the threshing instruments for wood, and the wheat for the meal-offering; I give it all. 24. And king David said to Ornan, Nay; but I will verily buy it for the full price: for I will not take that which is thine for Jehovah, nor offer a burnt-offering without cost. 25. So David gave to Ornan for the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight. 26. And David built there an altar unto Jehovah, and offered burnt-offerings and peace-offerings, and called upon Jehovah; and he answered him from heaven by fire upon the altar of burn-offering. 27. And Jehovah commanded the angel; and he put up his sword again into the sheath thereof.
28. At that time, when David saw that Jehovah had answered him in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite, then he sacrificed there. 29. For the tabernacle of Jehovah, which Moses made in the wilderness, and the altar of burnt-offering, were at that time in the high place at Gibeon. 30. But David could not go before it to inquire of God; for he was afraid because of the sword of the angel of Jehovah.
PARAPHRASE
1Ch. 21:1. Then Satan brought disaster upon Israel, for he made David decide to take a census. 2. Take a complete census throughout the land and bring me the totals. he told Joab and the other leaders. 3. But Joab objected. If the Lord were to multiply his people a hundred times, would they not all be yours? So why are you asking us to do this? Why must you cause Israel to sin? 4. But the king won the argument, and Joab did as he was told; he traveled all through Israel and returned to Jerusalem. 5. The total population figure which he gave came to 1,100,000 men of military age in Israel and 470,000 in Judah. 6. But he didnt include the tribes of Levi and Benjamin in his figures because he was so distressed at what the king had made him do. 7. And God, too, was displeased with the census and punished Israel for it. 8. But David said to God, I am the one who has sinned. Please forgive me, for I realize now how wrong I was to do this.
9. Then the Lord said to Gad, Davids personal prophet, 10, 11. Go and tell David, The Lord has offered you three choices. Which will you choose? 12. You may have three years of famine, or three months of destruction by the enemies of Israel, or three days of deadly plague as the angel of the Lord brings destruction to the land. Think it over and let me know what answer to return to the one who sent me. 13. This is a terrible decision to make, David replied, but let me fall into the hands of the Lord rather than into the power of men, for Gods mercies are very great. 14. So the Lord sent a plague upon Israel and 70,000 men died as a result. 15. During the plague God sent an angel to destroy Jerusalem; but then he felt such compassion that he changed his mind and commanded the destroying angel, Stop! It is enough! (The angel of the Lord was standing at the time by the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.) 16. When David saw the angel of the Lord standing between heaven and earth with his sword drawn, pointing toward Jerusalem, he and the elders of Israel clothed themselves in sackcloth and fell to the ground before the Lord. 17. And David said to God, I am the one who sinned by ordering the census. But what have these sheep done? O Lord my God, destroy me and my family, but do not destroy your people.
18. Then the angel of the Lord told Gad to instruct David to build an altar to the Lord at the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite. 19, 20. So David went to see Ornan, who was threshing wheat at the time, Ornan saw the angel as he turned, and his four sons ran and hid. 21. Then Ornan saw the king approaching. So he left the threshing-floor and bowed to the ground before King David. 22. David said to Ornan, Let me buy this threshing-floor from you at its full price; then I will build an altar to the Lord and the plague will stop. 23. Take it, my lord, and use it as you wish, Ornan said to David. Take the oxen, too, for the wheat for the grain offering. I give it all to you. 24. No, the king replied, I will buy it for the full price; I cannot take what is yours and give it to the Lord. I will not offer a burnt offering that has cost me nothing! 25. So David paid Ornan $4,300 in gold, 26. and built an altar to the Lord there, and sacrificed burnt offerings and peace offerings upon it; and he called out to the Lord, who answered by sending down fire from heaven to burn up the offering on the altar. 27. Then the Lord commanded the angel to put back his sword into its sheath;
28. and when David saw that the Lord had answered his plea, he sacrificed to him again. 29. The Tabernacle and altar made by Moses in the wilderness were on the hill of Gibeon, 30. but David didnt have time to go there to plead before the Lord, for he was terrified by the drawn sword of the angel of Jehovah.
COMMENTARY
Chapter twenty-one describes another sin in Davids life. Why his sin with Bathsheba is omitted in Chronicles and why this account of the sin in the military census is included are matters not explained in the Bible. The particulars of the military census are detailed in 1Ch. 21:1-8. The parallel account is recorded in 2Sa. 24:1-25. The record in Samuel says that the anger of Jehovah was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them (1Ch. 24:1). The chronicler says (1Ch. 21:1) that Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel. The king in the later years of his reign stubbornly insisted that a numbering of the warriors be done even though it was unnecessary and contrary to Jehovahs will. As in the matter when David sinned with Bathsheba, so David permitted Satan to have control of his life. The results were disastrous. Every indication pointed to a military census of Israel as we consider the kind of numbering that was to be done. Chapter 27 in I Chronicles describes the careful organization of Davids army. When he set up twelve courses of warriors, one for each month of the year, for special duties, he was careful not to number those under twenty years of age (1Ch. 27:23). Joab was the chief military captain. He and the princes of each tribe were charged with this responsibility. The whole procedure had to do with the military establishment. The project involved an extensive review and description of Israels total manpower. All of the territory from Dan to Beersheba had to be traversed. David was quite old at this time. Israels wars under his leadership were past. What he ordered with regard to this census could have no real motive other than that of self-congratulation. The whole matter was contrary to Jehovahs will. Joab saw through Davids problem in this matter and at great personal risk dared to hesitate to do what David had appointed. Joab warned that David would bring Jehovahs judgment on Israel by this act. Satan was powerful. David would not be denied. The census probably could have been completed in a relatively short time. Joab and the princes gave some attention to the assignment and after nine months and twenty days (2Sa. 24:8) reported to David in Jerusalem. The census takers had gone across the Jordan river through the Gilead country to Tyre and turning south they journeyed to Beersheba. In numbering all of Israel except the tribe of Judah, one million one hundred and ten thousand warriors were counted. In addition to these, four hundred and seventy thousand warriors of Judah were numbered. The Levites were not numbered. This had been characteristic of the earlier censuses. The tribe of Benjamin was not included simply because Joab was unhappy with his assignment.[39] The total number of warriors amounted to one million five hundred and seventy thousand. After the numbering had been done, David began to think clearly about his motives. His own conscience condemned him and Jehovah used the prophet, Gad, to bring David to his senses. David, like other great leaders of Israel, was capable of terrible sins. He also, like Moses and Aaron, had unusual ability to experience genuine repentance. David said, I have sinned greatly. I have done foolishly. He pleaded for Jehovahs forgiveness. He humbled himself. No longer was he a selfish, stubborn king; he would be Jehovahs servant.
[39] Schaff, Philip, Langes Commentary, Chronicles, p. 132.
The rest of the chapter (1Ch. 21:9-30) describes Jehovahs judgment on David and Israel. Gad was Davids personal spiritual adviser. He had been with David (1Sa. 22:5) in the wilderness of Judah when David was hiding from Saul. He was an historian of the life of David (1Ch. 29:29). Jehovah used Gad on this occasion to inform David with regard to Jehovahs judgment on his sin. In a rare action Jehovah through Gad laid before David three terrible penalties from among which David had to choose one. The penalties were (1) three years of famine, (2) three months of military reverses at the hand of Israels enemies, (3) three days of the sword of Jehovah which would include an awful pestilence. These three choices were only a suggestion of the vast numbers and kinds of trouble which Jehovah could unleash upon those who disobey Him. Jehovahs mercy cannot be weighed. He is also the God of wrath. When David had been charged to make a choice, he found himself cornered by the Lord. He faced the most tragic dilemma of his life. Which choice would be best for him and for his people? Famine, military defeat, and the deadly pestilence had not been known in Israel in Davids day. David was the one who had sinned. Which of the choices would bring the least amount of suffering on Israel and cause David himself to bear the weight of the judgment? David admitted his predicament. I am in a great straight. He did not choose any one of the three possibilities. Instead, he humbly submitted himself to God. He preferred to fall into Jehovahs hand and not into the hand of man. He trusted Jehovahs mercy. He made the best choice. Jehovah sent the deadly pestilence. The tenth plague visited upon the Egyptians in Moses day bears many similarities to this death. Before proper intercession was made, seventy thousand Hebrews died because of this pestilence. The trouble moved toward Jerusalem. Many had already died and the lives of David and his family were seriously threatened. Jehovah intervened. It is enough, God said. The angel in charge of the judgment stood by the threshing floor of Ornan (Araunah) the jebusite. The Jebusites were original inhabitants of Jerusalem. Jehovah permitted David to see the angel suspended between earth and heaven and holding the sword in a threatening manner. Sackcloth was a symbol of mourning. David and the elders prostrated themselves on the ground pleading for Israel. Davids heart was broken because so many Israelites (sheep) had died. He, alone, had been responsible for the sin. He pleaded with God to judge him and to spare the people.
At the angels direction Gad told David what to do. The threshing floor most likely was located on Mount Moriah in the eastern sector of Jerusalem, An altar was to be built on the threshing floor. In typical oriental fashion David bargained with Ornan for the threshing floor. David said he would pay the full price. Ornan said he would give it to David. Abraham was involved in a similar experience when he secured a burial place for Sarah (Gen. 23:9). Ornan intended to get the full price for his property. David revealed an important key to worship when he said he would not present to Jehovah any offering which did not cost him something. This is the essence of genuine worship. Hebrews could not offer a fish to God on the altar of burnt offering. No human labor or investment was required to produce the fish. Jehovah freely accepted lambs, goats, and bullocks as sacrificial materials because those who offered these kinds of sacrifices had labored over them for this purpose. When a shepherd offered a lamb, he also offered something of himself. David knew that a burnt offering and a peace offering had to be lifted up before Jehovah immediately if the plague was to be arrested. So he bought the site where he set up the altar. This altar would have been formed out of natural rock on which no tool had been used. David paid Ornan six hundred shekels of gold (perhaps about 6,000 dollars). Under normal conditions this would have been a very high price. As the offerings were on the altar and the smoke and fire ascended, the angel sheathed his sword. Gods wrath was turned. Davids house and the people of Jerusalem were spared. After such a wonderful experience on Mount Moriah, David often returned to that place to worship Jehovah. The Temple had not yet been built. The tabernacle was at Gibeon which was located in Benjamin about eight miles north of Jerusalem. The fear of Jehovah kept David from going to Gibeon. The angels sword, as had been the case with Balaam (Num. 22:31), made a deep impression on David. To inquire of God meant to seek Gods will. Priests and prophets often assisted in this matter. Davids declaration in 1Ch. 22:1 accounts for the choice of this site for Solomons Temple. This is the house of Jehovah and this is the altar of burnt offering came to be regarded as historic declarations.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(1) And Satan stood up against Israel.Perhaps, And an adversary (hostile influence) arose against Israel. So in 2Sa. 19:23 the sons of Zeruiah are called adversaries (Heb., a Satan) to David. (Comp. 1Ki. 11:14; 1Ki. 11:25.) When the adversary, the enemy of mankind, is meant, the word takes the article, which it has not here. (Comp. Job 1, 2 and Zec. 3:1-2.)
And provoked David.Pricked him on, incited him. 2 Samuel 24 begins: And again the anger of Jehovah burned against Israel, and He (or it) incited David against them, saying, Go, number Israel and Judah. It thus appears that the adversary of our text, the influence hostile to Israel, was the wrath of God. The wrath of God is the Scriptural name for that aspect of the Divine nature under which it pursues to destruction whatever is really opposed to its own perfection (Delitzsch); and it is only sin, i.e., breach of the Divine law, which can necessarily direct that aspect towards man. If Divine wrath urged David to number Israel, it can only have been in consequence of evil thoughts of pride and self-sufficiency, which had intruded into a heart hitherto humbly reliant upon its Maker. One evil thought led to another, quite naturally; i.e., by the laws which God has imposed upon human nature. God did not interpose, but allowed Davids corrupt motive to work out its own penal results. (Comp. Rom. 1:18; Rom. 1:24; Rom. 1:26; Rom. 1:28.) The true reading in Samuel may well be, And an adversary incited David, &c., the word Satan having fallen out of the text. Yet the expression Jehovah provoked or incited against . . . occurs (1Sa. 26:19).
To number IsraelSamuel adds, and Judah.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
(1-6) The Census.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
1Ch 21:1 And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.
1Ch 21:1
1Ch 21:1 Comments – The parallel verse to 1Ch 21:1 is found in 2Sa 24:1, which reads differently, “And again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.” In the book of Chronicles it was Satan ( ), and not the Lord, who caused David to number the people. In an effort to reconcile these different statements, Sailhamer notes that each time God was angry with Israel, He gave over to their enemies. He goes on to explain that when King Solomon was obeying the Lord, God gave him rest from all of his adversaries, “so that there is neither adversary nor evil occurrent.” (1Ki 5:4). Later, when Solomon sinned, “the LORD stirred up an adversary unto Solomon, Hadad the Edomite,” (1Ki 11:14) and “God stirred him up another adversary, Rezon the son of Eliadah,” (1Ki 11:23), and “he was an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon.” (1Ki 11:25) In these four verses, the same Hebrew word, “satan” ( ), is used, as in 1Ch 21:1. Sailhamer notes that the word ( ) is also used in a similar context in 1Sa 29:4. Thus, based upon this recurring motive in the historical books, he reconciles these two different statements by interpreting 1Ch 21:1 to mean that David’s enemies rose up with threats to invade Israel because of his disobedience to God. [27]
[27] John H. Sailhamer, Introduction to Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, c1995), 305.
1Ki 5:4, “But now the LORD my God hath given me rest on every side, so that there is neither adversary nor evil occurrent.”
1Ch 21:1 Comments – Note Satan’s timing. Israel was victorious against evil countries everywhere, which were under Satan’s control (1Jn 5:19). When God begins working mightily, Satan gets stirred up, like we seen in the book of the Acts when persecutions come against the New Testament church.
1Jn 5:19, “And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.”
1Ch 21:12 Either three years’ famine; or three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while that the sword of thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of the LORD, even the pestilence, in the land, and the angel of the LORD destroying throughout all the coasts of Israel. Now therefore advise thyself what word I shall bring again to him that sent me.
1Ch 21:12
2Sa 24:13, “So Gad came to David, and told him, and said unto him, Shall seven years of famine come unto thee in thy land? or wilt thou flee three months before thine enemies, while they pursue thee? or that there be three days’ pestilence in thy land? now advise, and see what answer I shall return to him that sent me.”
A look at the Hebrew words:
2Sa 24:13 – Hebrew ( ) (H7651) “seven”
1Ch 21:12 – Hebrew ( ) (H7969) “three”
1Ch 21:24 And king David said to Ornan, Nay; but I will verily buy it for the full price: for I will not take that which is thine for the LORD, nor offer burnt offerings without cost.
1Ch 21:24
1Ch 21:25 So David gave to Ornan for the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight.
1Ch 21:25
2Sa 24:24, “And the king said unto Araunah, Nay; but I will surely buy it of thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the LORD my God of that which doth cost me nothing. So David bought the threshingfloor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.”
1Ch 21:26 And David built there an altar unto the LORD, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and called upon the LORD; and he answered him from heaven by fire upon the altar of burnt offering.
1Ch 21:26
Lev 9:24, “And there came a fire out from before the LORD, and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat: which when all the people saw, they shouted, and fell on their faces.”
The angel accepted the sacrifice of Manoah, the father of Samson by consuming it with fire.
Jdg 13:19, “So Manoah took a kid with a meat offering, and offered it upon a rock unto the LORD: and the angel did wondrously; and Manoah and his wife looked on. For it came to pass, when the flame went up toward heaven from off the altar, that the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame of the altar. And Manoah and his wife looked on it, and fell on their faces to the ground.”
A fire from heaven consumed the sacrifice of King David at the threshing floor of Ornan.
1Ch 21:26, “And David built there an altar unto the LORD, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and called upon the LORD; and he answered him from heaven by fire upon the altar of burnt offering.”
A fire also came from heaven and consumed the sacrifice of King Solomon at the dedication of the temple.
2Ch 7:1, “Now when Solomon had made an end of praying, the fire came down from heaven, and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices; and the glory of the LORD filled the house.”
Fire also consumed the sacrifice of Elijah on Mount Carmel.
1Ki 18:38, “Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.”
In addition, during the time of Moses, God consumed the children of Israel with fire as a form of judgment (Num 11:1-2; Num 16:35).
1Ch 21:27 And the LORD commanded the angel; and he put up his sword again into the sheath thereof.
1Ch 21:27
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
David Numbers the People The Lord had given the nation of Israel the procedures for numbering the population in the book of Exodus (Exo 30:11-16). Each man was to offer half a shekel unto the Lord in order to make an atonement for his soul so that a plague does not break out among them. In this way, the Lord would recognize each person counted. Since David does not perform this census properly, he caused a plague to break forth among the people.
Exo 30:11-16, “And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the LORD, when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them. This they shall give, every one that passeth among them that are numbered, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary: (a shekel is twenty gerahs:) an half shekel shall be the offering of the LORD. Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old and above, shall give an offering unto the LORD. The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less than half a shekel, when they give an offering unto the LORD, to make an atonement for your souls. And thou shalt take the atonement money of the children of Israel, and shalt appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation; that it may be a memorial unto the children of Israel before the LORD, to make an atonement for your souls.”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
David’s Sin and its Consequences
v. 1. And Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to number Israel. v. 2. And David said to Joab and to the rulers of the people, Go, number Israel from Beersheba, v. 3. And Joab answered, v. 4. Nevertheless, the king’s word prevailed against Joab, v. 5. And Joab gave the sum of the number of the people unto David. And all they of Israel were a thousand thousand and an hundred thousand men that drew sword; and Judah was four hundred threescore and ten thousand men that drew sword. v. 6. But Levi and Benjamin counted he not among them, for the king’s word was abominable to Joab. v. 7. And God was displeased with this thing, v. 8. And David said unto God, I have sinned greatly because I have done this thing; but now, I beseech Thee, do away, v. 9. And the Lord, v. 10. Go and tell David, saying, Thus saith the Lord, I offer thee three things, v. 11. So Gad came to David and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Choose thee, v. 12. either three years’ famine, or three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while that the sword of thine enemies overtaketh thee, v. 13. And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait, v. 14. So the Lord sent pestilence upon Israel; and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men.
v. 15. And God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it, v. 16. And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the Lord stand between the earth and the heaven, v. 17. And David said unto God, Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered? Even I it is that have sinned and done evil indeed,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
This very important chapter in David’s history is the parallel of 2Sa 24:1-25, which contains some details not found here, e.g. the route taken by those who went to number Israel (2Sa 24:5-8), and omits others. This chapter furnishes one of the clearer proofs (in respect of what it supplies, not found in Samuel) that its indebtedness is not to that book, but to a work open as well to the compiler of Chronicles as to the writer of Samuel. Its contents fall into five sections.
1. David’s command to number the people, with Joab’s remonstrances (2Sa 24:1-6).
2. The means taken to rouse David to a sense of his sin, and his confession thereof (2Sa 24:7, 2Sa 24:8).
3. The choice between punishments presented to him and his prayer under the drawn sword of the angel for the sparing of the people (2Sa 24:9-17).
4. The accepted propitiatory sacrifices and offerings of David, and the consequent stay of the plague (2Sa 24:18 -27).
5. David’s grateful establishment of that same spot as the place of sacrifice (verses 28-30).
1Ch 21:1
Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel. This remarkable sentence takes the place of the statements in the parallel, “And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.” Our own passage seems to confine the temptation and sin to David. David also seems to be spoken of as the object of malignant attack on the part of Satan, though Israel is spoken of as the object of malignant envy and animosity. It is also to be noticed that in 1Ch 21:17 David takes all the blame to himself, and speaks of the people as “innocent sheep.” A people and whole nation have, indeed, often suffered the smart of one ruler’s sin. Yet here the light thrown upon the whole event by the account in the Book of Samuel must be accepted as revealing the fact that there had been previously something amiss on the part of the peopleperhaps something of illest significance lurking in their constitution. This alone could “kindle the auger of the Lord against Israel.” It is the opposite of this which kindles the anger of Satanwhen he witnesses excellence, surpassing excellence, as when he witnesses “the weakest saint,” yet in that strongest position, “on his knees.” The apparent inconsistency in Satan being spoken of as resisting Israel, and the anger of the Lord being spoken of as kindled against Israel, is but apparent and superficial. In the first place, these histories do only purport to state the facts overt. And in this sense either alternative statement gives the prima facie facts. Either is true, and both may be true in different chronological order. And further, that the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel is no disproof that Satan will see and seize his opportunity. It looks the contrary way. There was a time and an occasion in Eden when Satan thought he saw an opportunity, tried it, and found it, when the anger of the Lord was not kindled against Adam and Eve for certain. But much more prompt will be the executive of Satan at another and less doubtful time. The paths in written history are often awhile rugged and broken up; the written history of Scripture is no exception. And in thus being the more in analogy with history itself, those unevennesses and breaks are the better attestation of both the reality of the Scripture history and the veracity of its writers. The word () occurs twenty-four times in the Old Testament. On all occasions of its occurrence in the Book of Job and in the prophecies of Zechariah, it shows the prefixed definite article; in all other places it is, with the present passage, unaccompanied by the article. Its translation here might appear strictly as that of a proper name. But this cannot be said of the other instances of its use, when without the article (Num 22:22, Num 22:32; 1Sa 29:4). This constitutes with some the ground of the very opposite opinion and opposite translation. If we regard the name as utterly expressing the personality of Satan, the passage is very noteworthy, and will be most safely regarded as the language of the compiler, and not as copied from the original source. The signification of the word “Satan,” as is well known, is “adversary,” or “accuser.” The sin of David in giving the order of this verse was of a technical and ceremonial character, in the first place, whatever his motives were, and however intensified by other causes of a moral and more individual complexion. We learn (Exo 30:12-16) the special enactments respecting what was to be observed when “the sum of the children of Israel after their number” was to be taken. However, the same passage does not say, it fails to say, when such a numbering would be legitimate or when not. It is left us, therefore, to deduce this from observation. And we notice, in the first place, that, on the occasion of its undoubted rightness, it is the work of the distinct commandment of God (Num 1:1-3; Num 26:1-4). Next, we notice the religious contribution, “the ransom,” that was required with it (Exo 30:12-16; Exo 38:25, Exo 38:26; Num 31:48 -55). Again, we notice that the numberings narrated both in the beginning of the Book of Numbers (1.) and toward the close (26.) had specific moral objects as assigned by Godamong them the forcible teaching of the loss entailed by the successive rebellions of the people (Num 26:64, Num 26:65; Deu 2:14, Deu 2:15). And though last, not least, all these indications are lighted up by the express and emphatic announcements in God’s original promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that their seed should become past numbering, multitudinous as the stars, and as the sands of the seashore. From all which we may conclude that only that numbering was held legitimate which was for God’s service in some form, and as against human pride and boastfulnessby God’s command as against a human king’s fancyand which was attended by the payment of that solemn “ransom” money, the bekah, or half-shekel (Exo 30:12). Other numbering had snares about it, and it was no doubt because it had such intrinsically that it was divinely discountenanced, and in this case severely punished. It seems gratuitous with some to tax David with having other motives than those of some sort of vanity now at work, sinister designs of preparing, unaided and unpermitted, some fresh military exploits, or stealing a march on the nation itself in the matter of some new system of taxation. The context offers no corroboration of either of these notions, while several lesser indications point to the simplest explanation (1Ch 27:23).
1Ch 21:2
And to the rulers of the people. So Num 1:4, “And with you there shall be a man of every tribe; every one head of the house of his fathers” (see also 1Ch 27:22-24; 2Sa 24:4, 2Sa 24:5).
1Ch 21:3
But my lord the king, are they not all my lord’s servants? The place of this perfectly intelligible sentence, indicating that Joab discerned the object of David in desiring the numbering of the people, is occupied in the Book of Samuel by the words, “And that the eyes of my lord the king may see it;” which some for no very evident reason prefer. It was, no doubt, a very radical element of David’s sin in this matter that he was thinking of the nation too much as his own servants, instead of as the servants of his one Master. The Lord ever knoweth who are his, and numbereth not only them and their names, but their every sigh, tear, prayer. A cause of trespass. This clause may be explained as though trespass was equivalent to the consequences, i.e. the punishment of trespass. This. however, rather tends to explain away than to explain a phrase. More probably the deeper meaning is that, in the fact of the numbering, nation and king would become one in act, and would become involved together in indisputable sin. Though there were no unfeigned assent and consent in the great body of the nation to the numbering, yet they would become participators in the wrong-doing. It would further seem evident, from Joab addressing these words to the king, that it was a thing familiarly known and thoroughly understood that the course David was now bent on following was one virtually, if not actually, prohibited, and not one merely likely to be displeasing to God on account of any individual disposition in David to be boastful or self-confident. Otherwise it would be scarcely within the province of Joab either to express or suppose this of his royal master.
1Ch 21:4
Wherefore Joab departed, and went throughout all Israel, and came to Jerusalem. This short verse stands in the place of all the five verses of 2Sa 24:4-8, with their interesting contents, giving the route which Joab and his assistants took, and the time occupied (nine months and twenty days) to their return.
1Ch 21:5
The report of the numbers as given in this verse does not tally with that of the parallel place. Here they are three hundred thousand more for Israel, and thirty thousand fewer for Judah, than there. No really satisfactory explanation of these discrepancies has yet appeared. The somewhat ingenious suggestion that the Chronicle-compiler counted in the standing army (two hundred and eighty-eight thousand, 1Ch 27:1-15) for Israel, and omitted from Judah a supposed “thirty thousand,” under the head of “the thirty” of our 1Ch 11:1-47.; while the writer of the Book of Samuel did exactly the converse,can scarcely pass muster, although it must be noticed that it would meet in the main the exigencies of the case. A likelier suggestion might be found in a comparison of the statements of our 1Ch 11:6 compared with 1Ch 27:22-24. Indeed, the last sentence of this last-quoted verse (1Ch 27:24) may possibly contain the explanation of all (cutup. Num 1:47-50; Num 2:33). That Joab utterly refused to number Levi, because this was a thing most distinctly prohibited (and further because it was not material to David’s presumable objects), was quite to be expected. And though Joab is said in the following verse not to have numbered Benjamin, it is possible enough that he may have known this number (1Ch 7:6-11). Yet see what follows.
1Ch 21:6
Averse to his task as Joab was, he may have been indebted to the memory of the exemption of Levi from census for the idea of enlarging upon it and omitting Benjamin as well. The important contents of this short verse are not found in Samuel, so that we can borrow no light thence. But Benjamin was “the least of the tribes” (Jdg 21:1-23), and Peele has suggested that God would not permit the numbers of either of these tribes to be lessened, as he foresaw that they would be faithful to the throne of David on the division of the kingdom. Others think that the omission of these tribes in the census may have been due to Joab’s recall to Jerusalem before the completion of the work, and to the king’s repentance in the interim cutting off the necessity of completing it. This little agrees, however, with the resolute tone and assigned reason contained in this verse. Peele’s explanation, meantime, explains nothing in respect of the statement that the king’s word was abominable to Joab.
1Ch 21:7
Smote Israel. These two words serve simply to summarize in the first instance what the compiler is about to rehearse at greater length. The parallel place shows, “And David’s heart smote him after that he had numbered the people.” Some better power occasioned that smiting. Reflection brought to David’s heart and conscience (1Sa 24:5), as often to those of others, restored vitality. The exact circumstances or providences, however, which roused into action the conscience of David are not stated. The second clause of our verse cannot refer to any preliminary smiting, but to the oncoming visitation of pestilence. It is noticeable, if only as a coincidence, that the eleventh verse of the parallel passage (2Sa 24:11) opens with a similarly ambiguously placed clause, “For when David was up in the morning, the word of the Lord came to the Prophet Gad,” although this is explainable simply as our insufficient Authorized Version rendering. However, failing any external cause, the beginning of 1Ch 21:10 in this same parallel place may intimate the adequate account of all in the spontaneous stirring of David’s conscience “the bitter thoughts of conscience born.” In these two verses we suddenly come upon the name “God” instead of “the Lord,” i.e. Jehovah.
1Ch 21:9
Gad, David’s seer. The parallel place says, “The Prophet Gad (), David’s seer” (2Sa 24:11). The Hebrew word here used in both passages for “seer,” is , in place of the word of higher import, , the use of which is confined to Samuel, Hanani, and to the person spoken of in Isa 30:10. In this last passage our Authorized Version translates “prophet” while in 1Ch 29:29 our Authorized Version translates both Hebrew names in the very same verse by the one English word “seer.” Gad was, perhaps, a pupil of David (2Sa 22:8), and was the successor of Samuel (1Ch 9:22) in this office.
1Ch 21:12
Three years’ famine. The parallel place has, in our Hebrew text, “seven” instead of “three.” But the Septuagint indicates this to be but a corruption of a later text; for it reads” three,” as here. The parallel place shows no mention of the destroying angel here spoken of. The three inflictions of famine, sword, pestilence, are found not unfrequently elsewhere in Scripture (see Deu 28:21-25; Eze 14:21; Rev 6:4-8). Now advise thyself. The simple text is” Now see,” in place of “Now know and see” of the parallel passage.
1Ch 21:13
It is in such answers as theseanswers of equal piety and practical wisdom, that the difference is often visible between the man radically bad, and the man good at heart and the child of grace, even when fallen into the deepest depth of sin.
1Ch 21:14
So the Lord sent pestilence upon Israel. This sentence is followed in the parallel place by “from the morning even to the time appointed.” It has been suggested that “the time appointed” may mean the time of the evening sacrifice, and that God shortened thus the three days to a short one day. There seems nothing sufficient to support the suggestion, unless it might lie in the “repenting” of the Lord, and his “staying” of the angel’s hand, in 1Ch 21:15. There fell of Israel seventy thousand men. The whole number of Israel, including women, must have reached near to five millions. On this assumption, the sacrifice of life for Israel would be something like 14 per cent; or fourteen in the thousand.
1Ch 21:15
And God sent an angel. It is at this point first that any mention of an angel is found in the parallel place, but then not in the present form, but in a sentence which would seem to presuppose the knowledge of the agency of an angel on the occasion: “And when the angel stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord repented him of the evil” (2Sa 24:16). Stood by the threshing-floor of Ornan. The verb “stood” is employed here quite generically. It does not imply that the angel stood on the ground; for see next verse, in which it is said that he “stood between the earth and the heaven,” the Hebrew verb being exactly the same. Ornan is the uniform form and spelling of the name in Chronicles. In Samuel, however, the name appears as (2Sa 24:20), or Araunah. Yet in 1Ch 21:16, of the same chapter the Kethiv inverts the order of the resh and vau, prefixing the article, or what looks like it, and again in 1Ch 21:18 the Kethiv shows the form . Ornan, then, or Arauuah, was a descendant of the old Jebusite race to whom the fort of Zion once belonged. And the present narrative finds him living on the Hill of Moriah. The threshing-floor. The primitive threshing-floors of the Israelites still essentially obtain. They were level spots of stamped and well-trodden earth, about fifty feet in diameter, and selected in positions most exposed to the wind, in order to take the advantage of its help in the separating of the grain from the chaff. On these circular spots of hard earth the sheaves of grain, of whatever kind, were distributed in all sorts of disorder. Oxen and other cattle trod them. And sometimes these beasts were driven round and round five abreast. The stalk of the grain was, of course, much bruised and crushed, and the method is described still as of a very rough and wasteful kind. Instruments were also employed, as the “flail” (Rth 2:17; Isa 28:27, Isa 28:28); the “sledge,” to which possibly reference is made in Jdg 8:7, Jdg 8:16, under the name barkanim (Authorized Version, “briers”). These sledges were of two kinds:
(1) the morag (2Sa 24:22; 1Ch 21:23; Isa 41:15), made of fiat planks joined together, and furnished with rough studs on the under surface; and
(2) agalah, rendered Authorized Version, “cart-wheel” (Isa 28:27), made of wooden rollers, or rollers of iron or stone, and dragged by cattle over the sheaves. Egypt and Syria, as well as Palestine, still show these instruments.
1Ch 21:16, 1Ch 21:17
These verses offer instances, especially the former, of the shorter narratives not being with Chronicles, but with Samuel And the longer narrative being with Chronicles is found uniformly in the cases in which reference is had, whether more or less directly, to the ecclesiastical or permanent institution of the Israelites.
1Ch 21:18
The angel. The Hebrew shows no article (see Num 22:34, Num 22:35; 1Ki 13:18; 1Ki 19:5; Zec 1:9). The place where the altar was now about to be erected was that made famous by the sacrifice of Abraham (Gen 22:2, Gen 22:9), and, though less certainly, that known to the priesthood of Melchizedek (Gen 14:17-20).
1Ch 21:20
This verse is not found in the parallel place. The Septuagint reading of “king” in this verse, in place of “angel,” is no doubt an error. The drift of this and the following verse is plain and continuous. Ornan and his sons had hidden themselves on the apparition of the angel, but came out on the advent of David, to welcome him.
1Ch 21:22
The place of this threshing-floor; i.e. the place on which the threshing-floor was made. It was the level summit of the middle elevated ground of the eastern ridge on which Jerusalem was situate (1Ch 11:4-7).
1Ch 21:23
Ornan’s offer to David of the threshing-floor and all its belongings, as a gift, reminds of Ephron’s offer to Abraham (Gen 23:11). Ornan’s prompt offer of gift was, perhaps, all the prompter from the desire to render every assistance to the staying of the plague. For burnt offerings for the meat offering. The whole code of regulations for offeringssin offering, trespass offering, peace offering, burnt offering, meat and drink offeringis to be found in Leviticus 1-7. As regards the burnt offering, see Lev 1:1-17.; Lev 6:8-13. It was called , from its “ascending” accepted to heaven, or else from its being put up or raised up (Hiph. conjugation) on the altar; and sometimes , from being “wholly” consumed. The sin and trespass offerings were for special sins, but this was of a more comprehensive kind and of much greater dignity, as standing for the “purging of the conscience.” The entire consuming of the sacrifice signified the unqualified self-surrender of him who brought the sacrifice. It was a voluntary offering, the offerer laid his hand on the head of the victim, and the blood of the victim was sprinkled round about the altar. The meat offering () is fully described in Leviticus it.; Lev 6:14-23. It was an offering without blood, and therefore was an accompaniment of an offering of blood. It was composed of flour or cakes, prepared with salt, oil, and frank-incensethe salt emblematic of non-decay; the oil, of spiritual grace; and the frankincense, of acceptable fragrance. A portion of this offering was to be burnt, and a portion eaten by the priests in the court, unless it was for a priest himself, when all must be burnt. Meantime a drink offering of wine was, in fact, a part of the meat offering itself (Exo 29:40, Exo 29:41; Lev 23:13; Num 15:4-7, Num 15:9, Num 15:10). The material of the meat offering might be the green or fresh-gathered ears of corn. The Septuagint translates ; Luther, speis-opfer; and it need scarcely be said that our Authorized Version meat offering exhibits only the generic employment of the word “meat” for food.
1Ch 21:25
Six hundred shekels of gold by weight. The only way to reconcile this statement with that of the parallel place, which (2Sa 24:24)speaks of “fifty shekels of silver” (i.e. taking the shekel at 2s. 8d; equal to about f6 13s. 4d.) as the price of “the threshing-floor and the oxen,” is to suppose that the fifty shekels speak of the purchase money of the oxen indeed, but not of the floor itself, which was valuable, not only for size and situation, but also for its prepared construction; or again, keeping to the literal language of Samuel, that “the floor and the oxen” are intended, while our expression, “the place,” may designate the whole hill. The value of gold as compared with silver was as sixteen to one. If this be the solution, we should have again an instance of the compiler of this book seizing for perpetuation the point of greatest and most permanent interest, i.e. the purchase of the whole place.
1Ch 21:26
He answered him from heaven by fire. There is no doubt significance in the fact that the compiler of Chronicles records this answer by fire, unmentioned in the Book of Samuel. He would give prominence to this great token, as determining, or going a great way towards determining, the site of the temple. The answer by fire was given on critical and special occasions (Le 1Ch 9:24; 1Ki 18:24, 1Ki 18:38).
1Ch 21:28
David saw that the Lord had answered him in the threshing-floor. David “saw” this by the fire on the altar, and by the fact that God, at the voice of the angel (1Ch 21:18), had not misdirected him, but had guided him aright. He sacrificed there. This means to say that he thenceforward “sacrificed there;” and established there the service of sacrifices. David was so impressed “at that time,” by the answer given in fire from heaven, that he began systematically to sacrifice on the site of this threshing-floor, instead of going to the high place at Gibeon, where the altar of burnt offering still stood. To have attempted to go thither would not only have meant a long and wasteful delay, but would also have meant the neglecting of the august omen of the angel present. An awful sanction is thus given to “this place,” Moriah, and it becomes “the house of the Lord God,” and the place of lawful and established sacrifice.
HOMILETICS
1Ch 21:1-30.–Typical, sin, suffering, sorrow, sacrifice.
The study of the narrative before us, together with its parallel, leads, with little room for hesitation, to the conclusion that there must have been symptoms in the national character of Israel at this time calling for some severe check or peremptory visitation. Failing this supposition, we cannot satisfactorily get over the language of the opening verse in the parallel record of 2Sa_24:1-25. It is, however, undeniable that in both places the history lays the whole head and front of the offending upon David, and that the offending was his is corroborated by his own forcible confession in the seventeenth verse of the present chapter. The brunt of the suffering, on the other hand, falls upon the people, who were cut down by the pestilence, and upon those who, from the ties of nature, to say none other, mourned their loss. This is so entirely the tenor of the history, that our exposition has no choice but to follow its lead. And we shall therefore unfold the moral and spiritual significance of the section from the standpoint of David, counting him the sinner, holding him responsible for the suffering, watching him in his struggle to emerge from the consequences of his conduct, and to lift his people out after him, and observing the sanctified result to which all was turned by the over- and ever-ruling providence of God. Let us notice
I. THE SIN OF DAVID IN NUMBERING THE PEOPLE. (2Sa 24:1-6.)
1. Whatever was the exact nature of this offence, we are not at liberty to discount it in allowing anything for the consideration already supposed, that Israel was ripe for some punishment, and stood in need of some severe visitation. This may have been true enough. Yet their leader, their shepherd, their king, should have been the first to watch each symptom of the kind, to study them anxiously, to counteract them in place of neglecting them or of co-operating with them, above all of becoming the actual exponent of them. It is for the shepherd to warn, to watch, to keep the flock. For every station in life there are its own proper duties, and for every increased and more exalted privilege of life there are its own proportioned opportunities and responsibilities. This is a moral canon of human life and society, always, everywhere, and that cannot be escaped in its solemn obligation. But how far David practically forgot it appears from this history. It is Scripture that represents it thus to us, that Satan knew the readiness of Israel to fall, designed disastrous damage to the flock, but that he saw and used his opportunity with no miscalculation, “scattering the flock” actually through and by aid of the shepherd. Once this way ascertained to be practicable in this instance, and Satan knew too well for Israel that it was the readiest way, the method most trenchanteasiest for himself, and most humiliating to those for whom he designed harm. A man’s own sphere, special privilege, particular duty, will always have it in it to reveal the possibilities of sin, to find the occasion for sin, to enhance the triumph of sin, and to make it burn with fiercer blaze and more lurid glare. Many difficulties have been made out of such detail as the language of Scripture contains here, and in places of similar kind. But Scripture traverses all these, simply ignoring the sceptic’s misuse of them. Scripture keeps in the tracks of the undoubted analogies of fact. Israel was ready to go wrong. Granted; but so also was he whose highest work and highest honour it was to watch and to know and to guard Israel from going wrong.
2. David’s sin was the further removed from excuse, in that those who were second to him in place and authority put him in mind, and remonstrated with him, and evidently with that earnest, nervous feeling which should have been at once as good as conviction to him. The offence was deliberate, determined, and would not brook expostulation. For so it is written, “The word of the king prevailed against that of Joab and the captains of the host.” It is the same thing as to say that the word of intolerant and arbitrary authority was encouraged to override the “Law and the testimony,” the suggestions of memory, the remonstrances of conscience, and the kindly spoken, courteous advice of friendly and constitutional counsellors. The man who has it in him to set at nought certain kinds of expression of disapproval, that tell tales so true to nature’s touch, has it in him also, so far at least as that humour is concerned, to set anything at nought. And the impression cannot be resisted that it was just so with David at this crisis.
3. The offence of David in numbering the people, unrelieved as it was by any external considerations, offers also a peculiar kind of evidence of the large infusion of the moral element. It is not, indeed, that the record of Scripture fails to furnish the grounds on which his action stood condemned; yet it may be admitted that we feel them to be wanting in some measure in precision. Considering all that resulted from the offence, this very thing proves the larger presence of no technical, no mere ceremonial fault, but of deeper moral fault. Is David condemned by the letter? He is condemned tenfold by the spirit. On the evidence, we are bound to find him guilty on the counts of principle rather than of the violation of positive commandment. Why, for instance, does not Joab in his ill-disguised disgust (which even grew with his task, 2Sa 24:6) quote the commandment, give chapter and verse for his intense disapproval and indignation? Oh yes, there are sins of the heart, of the subtle undergrowth of pride and ambition, and trust of self, which far surpass all others in significance and heinousness. Surely it were enough for the quondam shepherd-boy, now King of Israel, to be vicegerent of the King of kings? But David has slipped the charm of modest love and reverent fear and devoted religious service, and aims to be ruler in his own right. He does this just as really as Judas Iscariot, the disciple, thought it was open to him to compass and supersede the Master if he could. This constitutes the essence of what seems to he held up to view as the unparalleled offence of David, that he forgets his subordinate place, and presumes to try to steal an advantage on his own supreme Master. Does David wish to know the number of his fighting men? It is perhaps in part matter of pure vanity, probably in greater part in order to estimate the strength of his own supposed resources; in other words, to calculate how far he may afford to dispense with simple, trustful, humble, daily dependencedependence on the Lord his God. Nor was the calculating less or less pernicious, that it was unacknowledged, unconscious.
II. THE SUFFERING ENTAILED BY THE ONE SINFUL DETERMINATION OF ONE MAN. (2Sa 24:14, 2Sa 24:15.)
1. We have to credit David with causing now one of the most dreadful forms of human suffering. The state of mind which is filled with apprehension of suffering is itself suffering of the worst kind for any individual. It is not diminished by company, nor distributed by being shared among many. It is terribly intensified when a community, a nation, an army, is the prey of it. First, excited imagination very likely goes beyond the ensuing realities if they were but left to themselves. Then the facts result otherwise, and the realities on which the sun in the heavens has looked down in not a few such cases surpass imagination, even to beggaring it. History’s very devotee declines to believe. What cries, what wails, what maddened curses must have rent the air wherever the ear of David was to hear, whether he travelled or rested, whether he listened or strove to shut out every sound! When once pestilence walks abroad, it not only kills so many thousands of its own professional right, but from hour to hour, from morning to night, it tortures an uncounted number, who “hang in doubt of their life,” and have no rest, because they “have no assurance of their life” nor, indeed, of lives dearer to them than their own. And it is this which David does for the very flock it was his life-work to fold, to feed, and to shield free even from the breath of fear.
2. We have to credit David with having cut short some seventy thousand human careers. Even though the nation may have deserved the punishment, and their crimes have cried for judgment, David has laden himself withal with the responsibility of inflicting it. So many streams of human life he has dried up. So many deaths lie at his door. At so many burials the loud mourners and the low mourners, say it is he who has rifled the home of life and love, and opened the sepulchre’s dark door to receive an untimely prey. Youth he has cut down, beauty he has blighted, in their opening freshest hope. The strong men, the pride and defence of his kingdom, and the support of its homes, he has laid weak as the weakest. And for the peaceful or splendid sunsetting of old age he has substituted a horizon overspread with the gloomiest clouds. This is what one sinful determination of one man carried through could do, and really did. And it is a type of many, many an antitype. It is a type not least in this one element of it, that it did what it never meant nor thought to do, and yet is to the full answerable for it, because it was not in the path of duty, and was distinctly out of it. Sin sometimes takes very heavy toll out of those who do wrong, not because they mean to do so, but because they do not mean not to do it, and do not live with watching and prayer.
3. We have to credit David’s sin with an incalculable amount of human grief. Not always, by any means, is he who is gone the one who deserves most pity, even as he certainly is past the reach of any sympathy, but rather those who remain, who remember, who grieve, who weep, and not merely “would not be comforted,” but cannot be comforted, for comfort is not. To wound human affections, to make hearts bleed, to crush human courage, hope, life, is surely among the deadly sins, and to be revealed “in that day.” If Abel’s blood cried to God from the very earth, what cries must have reached him from the innumerable bleeding hearts of bereft homes now, wrecked of hope and joy and peace by David!
III. THE STRUGGLE OF DAVID TO EMERGE FROM THE CONSEQUENCES OF HIS SIN, AND TO EXTRICATE HIS PEOPLE AFTER HIM. (2Sa 24:12, 2Sa 24:13, 2Sa 24:16, 2Sa 24:17.) And it must be allowed at once that David begins to resume again his better self.
1. The struggle was the struggle of conviction, confession, prayer, even to wrestling; not the struggle against these. Although it may be held that there is some ambiguity about it, yet a comparison and combination of the two accounts need leave little hesitation as to the real order of things. David’s heart “smote him” after that he had numbered the people. Never mind that, it was not quite a spontaneous stirring of the conscience and heart that were within him; yet there was the factbranded and seared they were not. God’s sudden morning call and message (2Sa 24:11) roused David from his torpor in the twinkling of an eye. It was upon this event that conviction, most unreserved confession, entreaty for pardon and mercy, and in due time intercession, followed. And they followed with no other calculation than the calculation most instinctive of an awakened and alarmed soul. The real ring, solemn though the ring was, of other well-known self-condemnation of David, is now unmistakably heard. Not a syllable of excuse, not an accent of extenuation, is to be detected in the tone.
2. The struggle shows David in the midst of the very paroxysm of grief, and fresh from the rebuke of his great Master, to be possessed in a peculiar manner of the wisest and rightest attitude of disposition towards God.
(1) God offers an option. David declines it. He has already used his own free will and power to choose once too often. He will renounce it now.
(2) In declining to avail himself of that proffered option, he gives a reason, which shows how accurately he had struck the balance between the “mercies” of God and the “hand” of man. It apparently now amounts to an instinct with him, that there was no room for a moment’s hesitation between throwing himself and people upon the “mercies” of God, or being thrown into the hands of men. This his strongest impression was also his correctest, which cannot always be said of our strongest and most absolute impressions. ‘Tis a great lesson for all to learn, and a great fact in the world’s history all up to this present moment, that the paternal love is to be better trusted than the fraternal. The fatherhood of God is, after all, a better-ascertained reality than the brotherhood of humanity.
(3) At the very time that David is expecting his punishment, and acknowledging that he is “in a great strait,” he honours God by recording a testimony which had come of his own long experience of him: “For very great are his mercies.” The rod often brings us to our senses, and when only uplifted will suffice to bring a man to himself. But rarely did Davidor any one else who bad known, loved, done the truth, but fallen away from it toorecover himself so rapidly and apparently so completely in all essential respects.
3. The struggle offers an undesigned but fine example of an intelligent acknowledgment of the essence of the principle of sacrifice. When the scene is gone a little further, and the angel with drawn sword is beheld, David in an agony of pleading is heard beseeching that “the innocent” may be spared. He proclaims who are the innocent (so far, at all events, as his act is concerned); he begs that the guilty one may suffer, and proposes himself and his father’s house as the justly designated resource for sacrifice. The “altar and the wood,” ay, and the knife too, are there, and they shall not want the sacrifice. It seems possible, probable, that not merely
(1) David’s offer of himself for the object of punishment, but
(2) the very fact of his idea and suggestion of submitting to a punishment, all equivalent to sacrifice, was acceptable to God. David’s importunate expostulation, intercession, prayerthree in onecontain implicitly the principle of sacrifice. And it is observable that it is from that moment that David is authorized, and indeed ordered, to seek a place of sacrifice, and to erect an altar of sacrifice. Thus in the struggle to purge himself as far as possible of his offence, and at least to extricate his people from the fierceness of plague and suffering, he rises to this point of view, to entreat that on himself and his father’s house may be concentrated the punishment now falling far and wide on a nation.
IV. THE RESULTS TO WHICH ONE MAN‘S SIN AND AN IMMENSITY OF CONSEQUENT SUFFERING WERE NOW OVERRULED. (Verses 26-30.) Some of these results were of special significance in the then time of day, and for the people of Israel. Others am of significance for all ages.
1. For the thousandth time were shown forth these thingsthe loving fatherly heart of God, the hand that forbore, the yearning pity that “repented” because of its own tenderness of even the most deserved chastisement. Touching indeed is the language of 2Sa 24:15. So in older time the Lord himself to the angel, and the angel to Abraham, had cried,” Forbear; it is enough.” But not so when that dreader scene gathered in its fulness over Jerusalem. Though twelve legions of angels looked on, and might have come to the rescue, no voice said “Forbear;” and the only voice that did then speak as with authorityauthority notwithstanding what it must say and how it must say itsaid this, “Not my will be done;” and again, “It is finished”a signal for the awful sacrifice to go on to its solemn end.
2. The stricter typical principle of sacrifice was led up to, and an instance of it exhibited. Blood flows for sin, and the blood of those who were so far forth innocent was now flowing for sin. And this doubtless, though it fell on the innocent, was the punishment of sin. But we see David acknowledge the principle that sacrifice may avail to stay the punishment. He, however, viewed, and justly viewed, himself as the guilty, and therefore as the one who ought to suffer. He does not come before us as an instance of the innocent proposing to suffer in the place of the guilty. The issue is that the sacrifices of the Law were offered in great abundance.
3. By auguries memorable and solemn an altar of sacrifice and a place of worship were designated. They became consecrate for the service of a thousand years at one stretch, and for what more to come we know not. Though we must fail to realize what seemed to David and to Israel greatest in this, yet analogies of the most intrinsic kind guide us in the same direction. Meantime not the grandest building we may raise and dedicate to the worship and glory of God, to the love and service of Jesus, need mean either more or less to us than that site and that altar meant to David and Israel. And, on the other hand, it may with equal truth be said that the humblest building, the least pretentious schoolroom for the service of Christ, means more for knowledge, for heavenly light, for real beauty, than David and the temple, and Solomon and “all his glory.”
HOMILIES BY J.R. THOMSON
1Ch 21:1.-A king’s pride.
The Scripture historians do not conceal David’s faults. Though they represent him as the man after God’s heart, they faithfully record his grievous defections. He was evidently a man in whom the ordinary principles of human nature were unusually vigorous. There was, accordingly, warmth in his piety, and his sins were those peculiar to an ardent and passionate nature. His warlike impulses led him into cruelty, his amatory passions into adultery, his violence into murder, his self-confidence into the act of regal pride which is condemned in this passage. Accustomed as we are to a periodical census, and indeed to statistics of all kinds, it is difficult for us to understand how blamable was David’s conduct in numbering the people.
I. Observe AT WHOSE INSTIGATION the king acted. Although in Samuel we are told that the Lord’s anger with Israel was the deepest reason for the act and the explanation of all that followed it, our text refers the conduct of David to “an adversary.” Whether this enemy was human, or, as is generally supposed, superhuman, diabolical, is not material. A tempter, an adversary, suggested the sinful motive and the disobedient action.
II. Observe THE MOTIVE which led to this act. It was a motive often influential with the prosperous and the powerful. It was vanity, confidence in his own greatness, in the number of his soldiers, in the resources of his subjects. David had been a warrior whose arms had been attended with remarkable success, and, like many such, he doubtless deemed himself invincible.
III. Observe DAVID‘S PERSEVERANCE IN SPITE OF WARNING. Many sins are committed heedlessly. Not so this; for Joab, who was by no means a counsellor always to be trusted, warned his master against this act of folly, which he saw was “a cause of trespass to Israel.” David was not to be deterred, and perhaps resented, as such characters are wont to do, any resistance to his will. Temptation from without, evil passions from within, are often enough to overcome the calmest and the wisest counsels and admonitions. A lesson this of human frailty. A summons also to penitence and to humility.T.
1Ch 21:8.–Contrition.
David was a man who both sinned grievously and repented bitterly. If we have nowhere more striking examples than in his life of human frailty, we have nowhere more than in his recorded experience an example of anguish and of penitence for sin. Witness the state of mind manifested in the fifty-first psalm. We have in this most touching verse
I. CONFESSION OF SIN. This language may be regarded as a model of sincerely uttered confession.
1. It was offered to God. “David said unto God.” So in Psa 51:1-19; “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned.” Not against society, not against the state; but against the Searcher of hearts and the Judge of all.
2. It was a taking to himself of the guilt. “1 have sinned.” Instead of laying the blame upon another, the king accepted it for himself. It is a sad thing when men take excuses into the presence of God.
3. David had a just sense of the heinousness of his sin. He felt that he had sinned greatly. It was not in his view a light thing of which he had been guilty. How can we, as Christians, regard sin as a light matter, when we remember that sin brought our holy Saviour, the Lord of glory, to the ignominious cross?
4. The folly of sin was very apparent to David’s mind when he poured out his soul in contrite confessions before the Lord. “I have done very foolishly.”
II. ENTREATY FOR PARDON. It would be a sad case, indeed, if, when the sinner acknowledged his errors and faults, he did so with no hope or expectation of grace and forgiveness. But David knew that God was a God delighting in mercy and ready to forgive. Accordingly he added to his confession this entreaty: “I beseech thee, do away the iniquity of thy servant.” What abundant encouragement have we to present a prayer like this! The revelation of God’s character, the provision of a Divine Redeemer, the promises of a welcome gospel, all alike induce us to come unto God in the attitude, not only of sinners, but of suppliants, beseeching of him a favourable reception, and the extension to us as sinners of his clemency and grace. T.
1Ch 21:13.–Falling into the hand of the Lord.
There is something very simple and touching in this expression. “The hand of the Lord” is, for the most part, mentioned in Scripture as the emblem of God’s protecting, upholding, preserving power. Here it indicates chastisement. How truly submissive and filial was the spirit which was manifested in this petition! Whether God’s hand was raised to deliver or to smite, his servant was contentso that it was God’s.
I. THE LORD SOMETIMES CHASTENS EVEN REPENTING OFFENDERS. Some unthinking persons may wonder why, if the sinner be penitent and the sin forgiven, there should be any necessity for punishment at all. But facts cannot be explained away. The great Lord and Judge of all does Sometimes, as in the instance before us, permit the sinner to endure temporal consequences of sin, although his anger is turned away from the repentant heart. God thus avenges his own Law, upholds his own authority, shows himself a righteous Sovereign and Ruler.
II. THERE ARE REASONS FOR MEEKLY SUBMITTING TO DIVINE CHASTISEMENT. An alternative of punishment is not God’s usual offer to repenting sinners. There is much to commend in the choice which David made when Gad, at the Lord’s command, permitted the king to elect one form of penalty rather than another. David referred the matter wholly into “the band” of a wise and merciful God. There are many reasons why we should thus submit when the Lord chastens.
1. God is the All-merciful. For this reason his people may well be content to “fall into his hand.” “Very great are his mercies.” He is “merciful and gracious, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin.” His character, his promises, and especially his “unspeakable gift,” should encourage us to lay aside all rebellion, murmuring, and fear, and to submit with patience, and “endure chastening.” It is, no doubt, in his power to punish with far greater severity than any human enemy is capable of doing. But whilst “the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel,” the mercy of God is boundless as his nature.
2. God knows, not only the sin, but the repentance by which it it followed. He reads the heart, and hears the sighs, and marks the tears of every contrite penitent. He sees when a deep impression of the sinfulness of sin has been produced. He knew that though David was a great sinner, he was a sincere, submissive, and lowly penitent. He makes a distinction between the punishment which is a mark of his righteous displeasure with the sin, and that which is needed to bring the offender to a just sense of his ill desert.
3. God tempers his chastisements with Divine consolations and support. He does not desert his children, even in their deserved distresses. He is with them in the furnace. When they are ready to sink beneath their merited sorrows, lo! his everlasting arms are found to be underneath them.
4. God designs, by all his chastening, to secure his people‘s spiritual good. He afflicts, not for his pleasure, but for our profit. His purpose is that we may “bring forth the peaceable fruits of righteousness.” Men may wreak malicious vengeance; God’s discipline is that of a holy and compassionate Father.T.
1Ch 21:15.–God’s repentance.
How often, in the Scriptures, are human emotions attributed to God! The charge of “anthropopathy” has, in consequence, sometimes been brought against what we hold to be Divine revelation. The truth is that objectors do not truly believe in the personality of God. The Bible does teach us to think of God as a Persona living, conscious Being, with moral attributes and purposes. It even speaks, as in the text, of God’s repentance.
I. THIS IS NOT THE REPENTANCE OF ONE WHO HAS DONE WRONG. This is the usual application of the word, but it obviously has no place here. The penalty inflicted upon David was a just and deserved one. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” As a Ruler of inflexible righteousness, the Lord demands our reverence and confidence in all the proceedings of his providence.
II. IT IS THE REPENTANCE OF PITY. We find a satisfaction in attributing to the Lord the emotions of pity, of long-suffering, and of love. The spectacle of the suffering nation, and the humbled, afflicted, contrite king, was one which deeply affected the Divine and fatherly heart. Repentance arose upon the perception that the chastening had now answered its purpose in rousing the sense of sin, in bringing the sinner low before the feet of a justly offended Judge and Lord. When the Lord saw this result, his heart relented and his wrath assuaged.
III. IT IS REPENTANCE ISSUING IN SALVATION. Then “he said to the angel that destroyed, It is enough, stay now thy hand.” Pity may be sincere, but ineffectual. Not so with the Divine King. He utters his fiat, and” in the midst of wrath remembers mercy.”
PRACTICAL LESSONS.
1. Adore and gratefully praise the forbearance and forgiving mercy of God.
2. Consider the gracious terms .upon which clemency is offered.
3. Recognize in the gospel of Christ the supreme illustration of the principle exemplified in the incident recorded in the text.T.
1Ch 21:17.-Sin taken home.
It is a most pathetic scene. The angel of the Lord, who had smitten with his destroying sword “throughout all the coasts of Israel,” was passing by the threshing-floor of the Jebusite. His drawn sword was stretched out over Jerusalem; yet it fell not, for he was bidden to “stay his hand.” The king and his princes and counsellors, clad in sackcloth, were prostrate in penitence and supplication before the visionbefore the Lord. And David was taking the sin to himself, and invoking the penalty upon himself, as he bowed low before the righteous Judge and Avenger. We observe in David’s language
I. A SPIRIT DIFFERENT FROM THAT OFTEN OBSERVABLE IN MEN‘S CONFESSIONS. There is no sign of:
1. A disposition to shift the sin upon others.
2. Or of a willingness that others should bear the penalty of the sin,
3. Or of a tendency to extenuate the guile of sinful action. We observe
II. A FRANK AND FULL CONFESSION OF PERSONAL GUILT. This includes:
1. An acknowledgment of his own offence.
2. A submission to the Divine wisdom and justice. He is willing that the hand of God, that is, the chastening and afflicting hand, should fall upon him and inflict the strokes which he is well aware he merits.
III. COMPASSION AND INTERCESSION FOR THE UNOFFENDING SUFFERERS. How truly is this David’s language! Under the influence of deep emotion he speaks, as men are wont to do in such circumstances, the language of his youth. His poor subjects are, to his view, like guileless, helpless sheep, scattered and smitten. He implores that in compassion it may please the Lord to save them.
IV. THE RECOGNITION BY THE LORD OF THIS SPIRIT AND LANGUAGE. David’s attitude was pleasing to the Lord. Reconciliation ensued. An altar was built, and sacrifices offered and accepted. And the angel of the Lord “put up his sword again into the sheath thereof.”T.
1Ch 21:24.-Cheap sacrifice disdained.
It is a scene of historical and of sacred interest. Upon the threshing-floor of the old Jebusite chieftain, the son of Jesse, by his repentance and prayer, secured the cessation of the pestilence which was desolating the land. The Divine command enjoins that on this spot where the plague was stayed, an altar shall be reared to Jehovah in acknowledgment of sparing mercy. The site is the property of Ornan, who with his four sons is threshing wheat. When David approaches, the Jebusite bows before him with reverence. The representatives of “the old order” and “the new” meet together. The scene is truly Oriental. The king asks for the site; the chief offers it as a gift; the king refuses to accept it upon such terms; and an agreement is entered into that the site shall become David’s in exchange for six hundred shekels of gold. Thus is acquired the land upon which an altar is built, and which is to become hereafter the site of the splendid temple of Solomon. David’s conduct and language convey a general principle of universal validity, viz. that it does not become man to offer, and that God will not accept, a gift or sacrifice which costs the giver nothing.
I. OUR GOD HAS A RIGHT AND CLAIM TO ALL THAT WE CALL OURS. We call it ours, but our possession is derived from and is subordinate to his creative bounty, his providential goodness. What have we that we did not receive from him? Our property, and our powers of body and of mind, we have from him and owe to him. That we cannot enrich him by our giving, this is certain. But we can please him and can advantage ourselves by giving to his people and to his cause.
II. GIFTS AND SACRIFICES THAT COST US NOTHING ARE CONTEMNED AND REJECTED BY GOD. David felt this, and expressed it in noble and memorable language, when he said, “I will not take that which is thine for the Lord, nor offer burnt offerings without cost.” Every sincerely religious mind must sympathize with the spirit here displayed. We are reminded that the widow’s mite was approved and accepted by our Lord Jesus. It is not the magnitude of the gift, but the proportion of the gift to the giver’s means, and, above all, the spirit of self-denial displayed in the act of giving, which meets with the approbation of the Searcher of hearts.
III. THERE IS PLEASURE AND PROFIT IN SELF–SACRIFICE FOR THE CAUSE OF GOD, The King of Israel found this to be so in his own experience, and the experience of all who in this have followed his example coincides with David’s. Our Lord has said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”T.
1Ch 21:26.–Accepted offerings.
The site of Ornan’s threshing-floor, once secured, was without delay consecrated to the appointed purpose. The altar was reared, the priests were summoned, the victims were prepared, the prayers were offered; and then the favour of the Most High was manifested, and the nation was spared.
I. THE OFFERINGS. Those which were presented on this occasion were of two kinds. The burnt offerings were typical of the consecration of the worshipper, body, soul, and spirit, to the God of Israel. The peace offerings were expressive of reconciliation and fellowship with Heaven. The appropriateness of both in the case before us is manifest.
II. THE OFFERER. In David’s offering we remark as characteristic of himself:
1. His obedience. As appears from 1Ch 21:18, he was acting in literal and immediate compliance with the direction he had received from the Lord through the angel. He had learned from Samuel the seer that “to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.” In this case the sacrifice and the obedience were one.
2. His prayer. David called upon the Lord. He was emphatically a man of prayer, and it was in answer to his prayer that the plague was stayed. We learn that his sacrifice was not merely a ceremonial act, but that it was accompanied with spiritual desires and acknowledgments.
3. His humility and submission. The king clothed himself in sackcloth and fell upon his face; and the man who in such a spirit sought to avert the Lord’s anger would certainly accompany his offering with contrition and submission.
III. THE ACCEPTANCE. This was apparent in two ways.
1. God answered him from heaven by fire, thus showing that the sacrifice and the worshipper were not rejected.
2. “The Lord commanded the angel, and he put up his sword again into the sheath thereof.” His wrath was laid aside, his mercy was manifested, the people were spared.
PRACTICAL LESSONS.
1. The spirit of David is an example to every suppliant sinner who deprecates the wrath, and would be delivered from the condemnation, of the righteous Judge.
2. The offerings of David are a symbol of the one Offering, Christ Jesus, provided by God himself.
3. The acceptance of David is an encouragement to every true penitent to approach the Lord with confidence, coming in God’s own appointed way, and in the spirit God approves.T.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON
1Ch 21:1-8.–Human action.
Probably there will always remain a measure of mystery about this act of numbering the nation. We shall always be more or less uncertain as to the precise elements of wrong which God saw in it, and which brought down so terrible a condemnation and penalty. There are, however, some features of the whole transaction which are certain and which are instructive. We see
I. THAT THE SOURCES WHICH CONTRIBUTE TO ONE HUMAN ACTION ARE MANIFOLD.
1. We see by the narrative in 2Sa 24:1-25. I that God at least permitted it to occur. “He moved David to say, Go, number,” etc.
2. We see (2Sa 24:1) that Satan incited David to the act.
3. The king’s own feeling and judgment had most of all to do with it; this was the source of the evil. David persisted in it against better counsel (2Sa 24:3, 2Sa 24:4).
4. It may be fairly contended that the condition of the people helped to account for it. We may infer from 2Sa 24:1 that God was displeased with Israel, and that his displeasure accounted for the absence of the Divine intervention which would otherwise have held back the king from his folly. Our acts are seldom, if ever, so simple as they seem; usually, if not always, more sources contribute to them than are seen upon the surface. They spring from hidden habits which have long been rooting and growing in the heart; they are the consequence of our own volition at the moment; they are the result of the agency of others who surround and influence us; they are affected by unseen forces which play upon us from below and also from above. We are sure of this, yet we are equally sure
II. THAT WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ACTIONS WE COMMIT. “God was displeased with this thing” (2Sa 24:7). He saw in it that which was sinful and wrong, worthy of Divine condemnation, calling for Divine retribution. Moreover, David owned to himself and confessed to God his personal guiltiness: “I have sinned greatly, because I have done this thing,” etc. (2Sa 24:8). No analysis of the forces which are at work upon and within us can affect the question of responsibility.
1. God “will not hold us guiltless” if we break his laws, if we wrong our neighbours, if we injure ourselves.
2. Nor shall be able to acquit ourselves. It will be long before sin will so harden us that we shall not suffer keenly from the reproaches of our own conscience, and then it will not be long before that fire within is rekindled by the hand of God, and its terrible flame will burn up all sophistries of the soul.
3. Nor will our fellow-men exonerate us; they will condemn us freely, and we must suffer the sting of their censure.
III. THAT THE RECTITUDE OR WRONGNESS OF AN ACTION DEPENDS MAINLY ON THE MOTIVE by which it is inspired. The act of numbering the people was not intrinsically wrong (see Exo 30:12, Exo 30:13). When the census was taken in order to ascertain what was due to the service of Jehovah or of the state, it was positively good and commendable. But on this occasion, when it was done, as we must presume, in a vain-glorious spirit, in order that the king might boast of the increasing number of his subjects, or else in a faithless spirit, that the king might know on what he could relyforgetting that his confidence was not in the arm of flesh, but in the living Godthen it became sinful, condemnable, disastrous. Almost everything is in the motive of our deeds. The fairest actions in the sight of man may be hollow or utterly corrupt in the sight of him who looketh on the heart (1Sa 16:7). The simplest and smallest actions may be great and noble in the estimate of him who measures with heavenly scales each human thought and deed.
IV. THAT THE GOOD OR EVIL OF A HUMAN ACTION IS NOT DETERMINED BY THE CHARACTER OF THE AGENT OR HIS JUDGES. Usually the good man does the good thing, but not invariably. Usually the man of lower excellence takes the wrong view when he differs from the man of greater worth; but not necessarily. Evidently a Joab may be right when a David is wrong. It was antecedently likely, in a high degree, that if these two men differed in any point, David would take the true and Joab the false view. But here it was otherwise (2Sa 24:3, 2Sa 24:4). On this occasion the better man might have learned from his spiritual inferior. We do well to expect good deeds from good men, and, when they seem to be wrong, to suspend our judgment until we have searched everything through. But we must not trust blindly to the reputed worthies of our day, or we may he following a good man when he is in error; or we may he simply putting ourselves into the hands and walking in the steps of scribes and Pharisees. With the help of God’s Word and his Spirit we are to “judge of ourselves what is right’ (Luk 12:57).C.
1Ch 21:8-13.-The human and the Divine in the hour of penitence.
We have illustrated here
I. THE HUMAN APPROACH TO GOD in the hour of penitence. “David said unto God, I have sinned greatly, because I have done this thing: but now, I beseech thee, do away the iniquity of thy servant,” etc. (1Ch 21:8). Here is, what there ever should be,
(1) a deep sense of sin in the soul;
(2) a frank admission of guilt, in word;
(3) a prayer that it may be put away, or forgiven;
(4) an intention to put it away from our own heart and life.
II. THE DIVINE OVERTURE TO MAN. God met the attitude of his penitent servant with forgiveness and a penalty. Thus he met David’s penitence before. “David said I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said unto David, The Lord hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die. Howbeit the child shall surely die” (2Sa 12:13, 2Sa 12:14). On the present occasion God offered David his mercy (not, indeed, expressed, but clearly understood), accompanied by a penalty in respect of which he might exercise his own judgment. In the choice which Jehovah thus offered David there was something exceptional. In his dealing with mankind God does, indeed, give us the one alternative of going on in sin with utter ruin at the end of it, or repentance and forgiveness with some penalty to be paid for past offences; but this is the only option he gives us. If we come to him, like David, penitently and trustfully, owning transgression, and pleading for mercy through Jesus Christ, he will reinstate us in our forfeited position, he will pardon and accept us as his reconciled children, and he will require of us that we suffer the necessary and inevitable consequences of our past misdeeds. If we have wasted our youth in folly, he gives us a regenerated and holy manhood and age, but he condemns us to go forward with a sense that we have lost for ever a large portion of the opportunity of life. If we have injured our health, enfeebled our intellect, and impaired our moral and spiritual force by guilty indulgences, he grants us his mercy and a cleansed and purified future, but he sends us on our way with a lessened manhood and talents reduced that should have been multiplied and enlarged. If we have thrown away the esteem and affection of the wise and holy, he receives us, when penitent, into the embrace of his Divine affection, but he makes us pay the penalty of our folly by climbing slowly up the steeps of regained reputation and of renewed confidence and love. Forgiveness, not unattended with inevitable penalty,that is the overture of God to the repentant sinner. In the penalty we pay there is no choice allowed us. The moral laws of the universe are simply not inverted or annulled; they do their work upon and within us: only with his pardoning love comes his Divine grace to enable us to endure, and to give us the victory in the strife.
III. THE HUMAN RECEPTION OF THE DIVINE OFFER. The spirit of David was one of holy submission; he said, “Let me fall now into the hand of the Lord; for very great are his mercies” (1Ch 21:13). In the acceptance of the overture and in the choice which he made, David expressed a devout and obedient disposition. This is to be our spirit also. We are
(1) gratefully to accept the mercy of the Lord;
(2) cheerfully to bear whatever penalty the guilty past may carry on into the near future;
(3) gladly to believe that the further future will free us from all consequences of sin, and hold nothing in its hand but Divine grace and goodness.C.
1Ch 21:13.–Tolerable and intolerable troubles.
These are not only
I. THE LESSER AND THE LARGER TRIALS OF OUR LIFE. Those, on the one hand, which cause temporary inconvenience, or slight annoyance, or little regret; and those, on the other hand, Which upset all our plans, or remove that which nothing can restore, or cut to the quick our lacerated and bleeding hearts, Not only these: as thus regarded, but also
II. THOSE WHICH ARE UNATTENDED AND THOSE WHICH ARE ACCOMPANIED WITH REMORSE.
1. When our troubles come upon us as the consequence of our fidelity and devotion, the source of them is a positive alleviation of our pain of mind.
2. When they arrive as the consequence of forces with which we have nothing to do, our mental pain is neither soothed nor aggravated by their source.
3. When we have to reproach ourselves as the authors of our own miseries, our souls smart with a keenness of suffering which makes us feel that “our punishment is greater than we can bear.” But our troubles are divided into the tolerable and the intolerable (or the less tolerable) when, as suggested by the text, we view them as
III. THOSE WHICH ARE OF DIVINE AND THOSE WHICH ARE OF HUMAN INFLICTION. David uttered a sentiment which is common to every pious heart when he said, “Let me fall now into the hand of the Lord; but let me not fall into the hand of men.” When the evils which are oppressing us, when the sorrows which are saddening us, are embittered by the feeling that they are due to the heedlessness and heartlessness of men, especially when due to the inconsiderateness of those whose relation to ourselves calls for peculiar thoughtfulness and attentionand still more, when they are inflicted on us by the positive malignity of our fellows, who find a cruel and horrible satisfaction in our losses and griefs, then our trouble is at its very heaviest, and seems to us quite intolerable. But when, as in unaccountable sickness, or in unavoidable loss, or in inevitable bereavement, we can feel that the hand of God is upon us, that we have “fallen into the hand of the Lord, and not into the hand of man,” then we are not tempted to add the bitterness of resentment to the heaviness of disappointment or to the poignancy of grief. It is well for us to remember:
1. That even those troubles which seem to be wholly of human origin are yet to be borne as evils permitted of God. If David had chosen defeat in war, that would have had the Divine as well as the human in its origin and infliction. In our very worst distress, in the most cruel aggravations we can experience, we should “be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live.” He allows them to come; he would have us be patient and docile under them; he will bring us out from under them; he will overrule them for good in his own time and way.
2. That we have reason to be thankful when the trouble that comes to us is such as we can readily ascribe to the Father’s hand. We must all pass through tribulation on our way to the heavenly kingdom: only by the waters of chastisement can we hope to be cleansed from some sins which beset us. It is well for us when the sorrow through which the Divine Father makes us t,o pass is of such a kind that we have no difficulty in referring it to his wisdom and love, and when, feeling that we have “fallen into the hands of God,” we can
(1) breathe freely the spirit of resignation,
(2) learn readily the lessons of affliction.C.
1Ch 21:14-27.-The arrested hand.
The hand of Divine wrath was stretched out, and dire calamity ensued. “The Lord sent pestilence upon Israel, and there fell seventy thousand men” (1Ch 21:14). And God sent an angel of destruction to Jerusalem: this terrible messenger stood with drawn sword (1Ch 21:16) over the city of David, and commenced the dread work of death there (1Ch 21:15). But suddenly the hand of God was arrested, the sword of the angel was sheathed, the ravages of the pestilence ceased, Jerusalem was saved. Whence this salvation? It is clear
I. THAT GOD‘S DIRECT DEALINGS WITH ISRAEL HAD NO SMALL PART IN THE MATTER. The king was vastly more responsible than any other individual in the realm for the coming of the visitation, and he was more concerned in its departure than any other. But the people of Israel were not irresponsible for the one, nor were they without a share in the other. It would have been impossible for us to believe that the multitudes of Israel would suffer as they did for this sin of David, absolutely irrespective of their own deservings; that would have been manifestly unjust. And, similarly, we should have found the greatest difficulty in believing that Divine compassion had nothing to do with the cessation of the plague. But the Scriptures sanction the conclusion of our judgment, if they do not suggest or even affirm itthat the coming and the going of the pestilence were partly due to the direct relations of God to Israel, Respecting its coming, we read that, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David’ against’ them,” etc. (2Sa 24:1). . “Respecting its going, we read that” the Lord beheld, and he repented him of the evil, etc. (1Ch 21:15); i.e. the pity of the Lord was stirred, and he stayed his hand. We may learn here the lessons that God has direct dealings with nations, approving their piety anal their purity, condemning their ingratitude and disobedience, rewarding the one and punishing the other.
II. THAT IT WAS LARGELY DUE TO THE KING‘S INTERCESSION, (1Ch 21:16, 1Ch 21:17.) Though it is not positively stated that the withdrawal of the angel’s hand was owing to the attitude and action of the king and the elders, yet we may safely assume that in large measure it was so (1Ch 21:27). There was everything in David’s spiritual posture to draw down a Divine response.
1. He was penetrated with a spirit of penitence; he freely and frankly owned that the sin was his: “It is I that have sinned and done evil.”
2. He was filled with a pure compassion for his people: “These sheep, what have they done? not on thy people,” etc. (1Ch 21:17).
3. He was animated by a spirit of noble self-renunciation. No doubt the desire of founding a royal dynasty had grown strong and intense with years of sovereignty, and must have struck very deep root in David’s heart; yet he offers to resign all his hopes if the people may be spared. “Let thine hand be on me and on my father’s house.” When intercession is thus humble, compassionate, and self-renouncing, it is likely to prevail with God.
III. THAT IT WAS SUITABLY ATTENDED WITH SACRIFICE, (1Ch 21:18-26.) David was instructed by Gad to “set up an altar unto the Lord in the threshing-floor of Ornan” (1Ch 21:18). After the usual Oriental ceremonies, the king purchased the site and reared the altar: there he offered sacrifices of propitiation, dedication, and gratitude; there he presented burnt offerings and peace offerings (1Ch 21:26); and Jehovah signified his acceptance of the penitential and sacrificial spirit of his servants by “answering from heaven by fire upon the altar” (1Ch 21:26). There are times when we renew our return unto the Lord, and he renews his acceptance of us. Such a time is the hour when we have sinned and have suffered. Then it becomes us to return once again unto the Lord,
(1) in penitence;
(2) in the exercise of faith in the one atoning sacrifice of the Divine Redeemer;
(3) in rededication of ourselves;
(4) in gratitude for his saving mercy.C.
Verse 28-ch. 22:5.–Divine overruling and human service.
In the concluding verses of one chapter and the opening verses of the other, we learn some lessons as to the way in which Divine wisdom made the past, which was one of error, prepare for the future, which was one of honour and even of glory. We also learn two things respecting human service. We see
I. HOW GOD CAN CONSTRAIN AN EVIL TO FURNISH INCIDENTAL GOOD. The sin of David led to the pestilence; the pestilence spread to Jerusalem. At Jerusalem David and the elders came forth to intercede with God; and, so doing, they sacrificed on the threshing-floor of Ornan. The fear of the angel of destruction impelled David to begin and (probably) to continue to sacrifice there (verse 30). At any rate, the offering on this one occasion led naturally, if not necessarily, to the continuance of the act in the same place. This led to the determination to choose the spot as the site for the future temple; and this to the king’s energetic and successful preparation for the erection of that noble edifice. Thus from evil came incidental good; and thus, continually, human error, faultiness, and transgression are made, under the far-reaching and overruling hand of the Supreme, to contribute in some way to good. Thus he “maketh the wrath of man to praise him” (see Act 8:3, Act 8:4; Php 1:12).
II. HOW SUITABLE WAS THE SITE FOR THE TEMPLE OF THE LORD.
1. Taken from a Canaanite, it suggested and predicted the ultimate triumph of the truth of God over all human error. The kingdom of God would rise and stand in every heathen land, as the temple of Jehovah rose and stood on Gentile soil.
2. It was suitable that a threshing-floor should become the base of a temple. Where God gives to us all nourishment for our necessities, there we, in glad response, may well give back to him all worship of the soul, all thanksgiving of heart and tongue, all offerings of the treasury.
III. How GODLY ZEAL WILL FIND A REASON AND A SPHERE FOR ITS ACTIVITY. David’s desire to build the temple had been positively disallowed. Any man in his position who had not that work very much at heart would have abandoned all further concern on the subject, and left the matter to his successor. But David’s heart was so full of holy zeal for the “house of the Lord,” that he caught with eagerness at the idea of making preparation for it, though he was not permitted to erect it. “This is the house of the Lord God,” etc. (1Ch 22:1), and forthwith he pressed into the service masons to hew stones (1Ch 22:2), and prepared abundance of iron and brass, and of cedar (1Ch 22:2-4). Thus his zeal discovered a sphere of activity; nor was he wanting in the discernment of a reason for action. He might have argued that while his advancing age would excuse inaction on his part, the youth of Solomon would ensure and demand the utmost activity. That is the light in which lukewarmness would have viewed it. Not so the king. He argued that, as Solomon his son was young and tender, and the house was to be magnificent, etc. (see 1Ch 22:5), he had better bring his experience to the work, that it might be as complete as possible. If we are really in earnest in the work of the Lord, we shall not see the reasons which might be found for our abstention or delay; we shall readily observe strong grounds for immediate and strenuous exertion. What is seen, in this as well as in other spheres, depends far more upon the eye than upon the object.
IV. HOW MUCH ROOM THERE IS IN THE FIELD OF HOLY USEFULNESS FOR THE EXPERIENCE OF LATER YEARS. There is good reason why all the work of the Lord should not be left to those who are “young and feeder.” By all means let maturity bring its solid strength; and let age, also, bring its varied experience, its gathered and garnered wisdom to the chamber of consultation and the field of labour. “Old age hath yet its honour and its toil,” its witness to bear, its counsel to give, its work to finish.C.
HOMILIES BY F. WHITFIELD
1Ch 21:1-6.–David numbering the people.
In considering this act of David, our attention must be first directed to the statement in the very first verse of this chapter, in connection with the corresponding passage in 2Sa 24:1. In one chapter it is stated that “Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel;” in the latter passage it is said, “Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them.” Manifestly there needs some way of reconciling these two statements so apparently conflicting. The latter passage implies that there was some guilt in Israel for God to take this step, and. this may be found in the rebellions of Absalom and Sheba against David’s kingdom. The word “again” points back to the judgment of God on Israel recorded in 2Sa 21:1-22. But although there was guilt on the nation on account of these rebellions, David himself was the instrument by which Israel was to be punished. On the other hand, there was, as Joab’s words imply, considerable pride and vanity in David’s heart in wishing for this census of the people. As he was about to glory in the number of his people, God reduced that number by seventy thousand, so that he should not have the glory. God’s law is to compel wickedness hid in the heart to manifest itself outwardly by furnishing the opportunities for its manifestation. Hence it is perfectly true to say, on the one hand, that God used David’s sin to punish Israel for their guilt, and, on the other, that Satan moved David to number them. The latter was but God giving David the opportunity for the evil of his heart to manifest itself, while of course Satan was the source of that evil. God used David’s sin to punish Israel; God gave the opportunity to David to number Israel in order to manifest the evil of David’s heart outwardly. Thus God punished Israel and humbled David. This may suggest to us the difference in the Bible between trial and temptation. In the Book of Genesis it is said, “God did tempt [or, ‘try ‘] Abraham.” In the Epistle of James it is said of God, “Neither tempteth he any man.” God tries; Satan tempts. Let us illustrate. Some thousands of pounds are lying on the parlour table when a servant enters the room. This is a trial of the servant’s honesty, and thus is from God. Satan says, “Steal some;” this is the temptation. So that every trial from God may at the same time be a temptation from Satan. To return now to the act of David in numbering the people. We have seen the sin of this act in that he was about to glory in the number of his people. “No flesh shall glory in his presence;” and so God reduced the number by seventy thousand. The mention of Satan as the author of this act is intended to show us that David’s purpose in it was, from the very first, an ungodly thing. Joab was aware of this, and regarded the act as “abominable.” His language in reply to the king indicates its enormity: “Why will he be a cause of trespass to Israel?” The word “trespass” here is significant. It means not only a trespass committed, but one which must be atoned for. This shows in what a heinous light he regarded David’s act. The king’s word prevailed, however, and Joab reluctantly obeyed. Levi and Benjamin were not counted with the number. The tribe of Levi was always exempt in such censuses, and the tribe of Benjamin was not numbered because David, in the mean time, having become conscious of his sin, stopped the census before it was completed. Joab gave the sum of the people to the king. It amounted to one million one hundred thousand men in Israel. This great population in so limited an extent of country is a proof of the fulfilment of the promise (Gen 15:5). Such great prosperity, however, is too frequently a snare, as it was in this ease. It proved too strong a temptation to David’s pride and vanity; and though the Lord used it to discipline David’s soul into deeper humility, it led to lamentable consequences. We see how little God can trust his children long with prosperous circumstances. It is for this reason the pressure of God’s hand is laid on many of them, and continued, in one form or another, through life; for, were it withdrawn, the heart would soon wander from God, and run the risk of forfeiting its heavenly inheritance, or its future glorious reward.W.
1Ch 21:7-18, 1Ch 21:29, 1Ch 21:30.–Effects of David’s sin.
The first effect of David’s act was that of incurring God’s severe displeasure. David’s eyes were opened to see his sin and its greatness. In earnest prayer he besought God to “do away the iniquity of thy servant; for I have done very foolishly.” This, however, cannot be. Sin may be forgiven but its sad consequences must be felt. A man who has brought ruin upon himself and family by a sinful life may have all his sin forgiven, but he must suffer the consequences and his family also, it may be, for generations to come. Nothing is more palpable on every side of us than this law in God’s moral government”visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;” and “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” In David’s sin we see also another law in God’s moral governmenta man’s punishment is always in the same line of his sin. David’s pride was in the great number of his people; the punishment lay in the destruction of seventy thousand of that number. There is an unvarying connection between the two, indicating the law of righteous retribution. As a judgment the Lord offered David his choice of three evils, and in David’s answer we see the true wisdom of a chastened and humbled child of God. “And David said unto God, I am in a great strait: let me fall now into the hand of the Lord; for very great are his mercies: but let me not fall into the hand of man. So the Lord sent a pestilence, and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men.” It is the truest wisdom of the soul in every such emergency to fall into the hand of God. Our loving Father does all things well; and while we must reap what we have sown in order to learn by deep experience what a bitter thing sin is, “a Father’s hand will never cause his child a needless tear.” God hates sin, and he will have us learn what a fearful thing it is that we may hate it too. The hand of God in this outpour of judgment is vividly pictured in this portion of the chapter. “And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the Lord stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem;” but just as he had begun to destroy, we are told God said, “It is enough, stay now thine hand.” How much greater might the destruction have been but for him who in the midst of judgment remembers mercy! Yes, in the midst of all our judgments, our trials, our sufferings, how much greater they might have been, may each one say! We can count our trials, but never our mercies. They are as the sands of the shore or the stars over our heads. The darkest cloud has ever a silver lining. And so it is here. There was another effect of David’s sin besides this terrible destruction of Israel, for in its results sin is always hydra-headed. Each one carries with it a fruitful crop. We find this effect in David’s own relation to God (1Ch 21:30). “He was afraid.” Exactly the same words are used by Adam in the garden, and the slothful servant in the New Testament. Sin produces distance from God. David was as truly behind a tree as Adam in the garden. Peace, communion, freedom, all that sweet interchange of fellowship between God and the soul, have all gone now! O Sin, how terrible art thou in thy consequences! One more thought is suggested by this portion of the chapter. The tabernacle of the Lord and the altar of burnt offering were at this time at Gibeon. Here was the prescribed place of sacrifice and here, according to orthodox ideas, David should have gone to offer his sacrifices. But God can give a man rest anywhere. He can apply his mercy to the soul and accept its sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving as well in Ornan’s barn as on Gibeon’s high places. David had seen the sheathed sword and the hallowed fire from heaven, not on Gibeon’s heights, but in Ornan’s barn. Whatever orthodoxy might think of the former, the latter was God’s chosen place for the temple. God’s experienced mercy, where justice had sheathed its sword and grace had answered prayer, made the ground hallowed. It is so still; and may every member of the Church of Christ never forget it.W.
1Ch 21:18-27, 1Ch 22:1.–Ornan’s threshing-floor.
It was in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite that the angel of the Lord sheathed his sword and where the voice of the Lord was heard, “It is enough, stay now thine hand.” There, by Divine command, the altar was to be reared. The Lord’s altar in a barn! Well, what matters it? The altar hallows the barn. Christ is the true sacrificial Altar, and whatever or whoever he touches becomes the “temple of the Holy Ghost.” Ornan was probably the Hebrew or Jewish name of the owner of this threshing-floor; Araunah his Jebusite or Canaanitish name. We see in the twenty-third verse the noble generosity of this man in offering to present David with the threshing-floor, oxen, instruments, and wheat, free of cost. It is true that in some cases (see Gen 23:1-20.) this apparent generosity, accompanied with so much Eastern courtesy and politeness, is only a thin guise to cover larger expectations from those to whom it is made. This Abraham well knew when he so resolutely declined the offer of the sons of Herb. This was not the case with Ornan. His was the offspring from the noble and generous heart of one who loved and served God. The inspired penman gives us the true interpretation of Ornan’s offer when he says (2Sa 24:23), “All these things did Araunah, as a king, give unto the king.” But however kingly Araunah’s conduct was here, David felt be could not accept it. God must not be put off with that which costs us nothing. “Thou hast offered me no sweet cane with money,” was God’s charge of old against Israel “Ye offer the blind and the lame for sacrifice. Is it not evil?” said Malachi. It is the law of life. That which costs us nothing is not worth having; how much less when offered to God! The widow’s two mites are of more value than all the gifts of gold in the temple chest. So David would only have the threshing-floor for the Lord’s temple at the “full price.” And mark the typical character of this threshing-floor. It was there the sword of vengeance was sheathed. It was there God’s voice was heard, “Stay now thine hand, it is enough.” It was there the hallowed fire descended in token of God’s acceptance of the victim on the altar; and there consequently the future temple was to be erected which exceeded in glory all that Israel had ever seen. So, centuries after, the cross of Christ was the substance of which all this was only the shadow. In that cross we see the sword of God’s wrath against sin for ever sheathed. We hear God’s voice saying, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!” In the midnight darkness, the earthquake, the rent rocks, the opened graves, and the rent veil, we hear God’s voice again from heaven, testifying to the majesty of that Sacrifice, and drawing from the lilts of even heathen bystanders, “Surely this was the Son of God.” And on that Sacrifice, that one Offering once offered, we see built the great spiritual temple of Christ’s body, the Church. “Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, Christ Jesus.” May we take up David’s language and say,” This is the house of the Lord God, and this is the altar of the burnt offering for Israel.”W.
HOMILIES BY R. TUCK
1Ch 21:1.–Satanic temptations.
The passage similar to this in 2Sa 24:1 should be compared with it. The word Satan would have been more correctly translated an adversary; and the sentence in Samuel would be correctly rendered, “One moved David against them.” The historical fact appears to be that one of the courtiers pressed this evil advice on the king, and the Bible writers properly see in such a man a tempter, an adversary, a Satan; and they recognize in all the consequences that follow the outworking of Divine judgments. The question of the Bible presentation of a chief evil spirit need not be discussed in connection with this passage. It is to one aspect only of the influence of such a being that our attention is directed. The Miltonic figure of Satan should be carefully distinguished from the Biblical; and in the instance before us the” adversary” is treated as a Divine agency used for the testing of God’s people by temptation to sin. If we fully accept the idea of the Divine education and training of men, it will be no difficulty to us that times of moral trial should be found, and subjection to evil enticements should form part of the Divine plan. We know that God tries and tests us by things, and it should not be difficult for us to realize that he may try and test us by persons. This is, indeed, our most subtle and most severe form of testing. A man may stand firm under all the various trials of affliction, and fall at last under the temptings and delusions of subtle sin. This is the point in David’s case. We should notice the time in his life when this severe temptation came. It was when we might reasonably have assumed that David was confirmed in goodness. “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” Interesting comparisons may be made with Abraham, tested late in life by the command to offer his son; and with Job, tried, when fully established in family and property, by the sudden loss of all, and his own extreme bodily suffering. David’s trial came when all his enemies were subdued, and his kingdom extended to its widest limits. We cannot suppose that the mere act of taking a census of the people was regarded as wrong. All acts gain their qualities by the spirit in which they are done, and David’s wrong was wrong of purpose and of will.
I. SATANIC TEMPTATIONS REGARDED AS HUMAN PERIL. Illustrate from our Lord’s words to St. Peter, “Simon, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat.” Danger-times occur again and again in a man’s life. He must conceive of his spiritual foe as ever on the watch for the weak, unguarded moment. Illustrate the Satanic opportunities found in times of frail health, of success in undertakings, of circumstances having an exciting character, of carnal security, of flattery, or of pride. Especially show that the moments of rebound from success, and exhaustion after victory, put us in extreme peril. Skilfully adjusting temptations to a man’s stronger side, Satan has oftentimes succeeded. Every hour is an hour of peril, and we need the hourly prayer, “Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe.”
II. SATANIC TEMPTATIONS REGARDED AS DIVINE DISCIPLINE. We may not separate any of the things happening to us in life from the Divine purpose and overruling. What we call evil is properly seen as part of the Divine agency for our moral culture. Divine overrulings do not change the character or quality of things, but they directly affect the result of things. All life is probation. We are being moulded in righteousness. So we find that even these strange Satanic temptations serve gracious Divine purposes in the individual man; and when we cannot see this, we may see that they serve gracious Divine purposes in the warning and teaching of others, and that some of us may even, as David, stumble unto falling vicariously.R.T.
1Ch 21:2.–The sin of self-gratulation.
The narrative does not clearly and explicitly state David’s intention in thus commanding a census of the people to be made. Probably he desired to know the numbers of the people of his kingdom as it had been extended by successful war; but this he wished rather for his own self-glorying than for national purposes. It was an act of self-will, and it failed from full loyalty to the theocratic idea which had been so well maintained during David’s reign. In just this lay its sin and its mischief. Dean Stanley calls the taking of this census “an attempt not unnaturally suggested by the increase of his power, but implying a confidence and pride alien to the spirit inculcated on the kings of the chosen people. The apprehension of a Nemesis on any overweening display of prosperity, if not consistent with the highest revelations of the Divine nature in the gospel, pervades all ancient, especially all Oriental, religions.” And Ewald says, “The only satisfactory explanation of this measure is that it was intended as the foundation of an organized and vigorous government, like that of Egypt or Phoenicia, under which the exact number of the houses and inhabitants of every city and village would have to be obtained so as to be able to summon the people for general taxation. But it is well known what a profound aversion and what an instinctive abhorrence certain nations, ancient and modern, harbour against any such design which they dimly suspect, not perhaps without good reason, is likely to result in a dangerous extension of the governing power, and its encroachment on the sanctity of the private home.” We may notice what peril often lies in the return of temptation upon a man after he has conquered it. David had warred in loyal dependence on God, but he fell when attempting to gather up the results of his victory. A camp is never so exposed to attack as in the time of exhaustion and over-confidence that immediately succeeds a victory. Illustrate from the power that lies in the backward suck of a broken wave.
I. SELF–GRATULATION ON ACCOUNT OF RESULTS OF LABOUR. Compare Nebuchadnezzar’s boasting over great Babylon. Contrast the spirit manifested in St. Paul’s boastings. He says, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” Show how keen we are for results, both in business and in religious spheres. The miser delights to count up his hoards, and the religious man is in peril of self-satisfaction in reckoning up his converts. Few of us can bear to have the true fruitage of our life-labour shown us yet; and we learn to think it most wise and good of our great Master that he puts off the harvest-day until by-and-by. Then we may venture to come “bringing our sheaves with us.” Enough now for us is the joy of workers in their work.
II. SELF–GRATULATION ON ACCOUNT OF SPIRITUAL TRIUMPHS. Illustrate from the peril of the hermit, monk, or nun; persons who devote themselves wholly to spiritual culture. Show that the humility they seek is ever slipping from their grasp, and subtle pride is asserting its place. St. Simeon Stylites on his pillar was probably prouder than any king. And so now exclusive attention to the training of feelings and emotions tends to self-gratulation. Perhaps more men are proud of their goodness than proud of their greatness. Against this subtle and insidious form of evil we all need to watch. And the great Heart-searcher needs to cleanse the very thoughts and heart, finding out for us our secret wicked ways.
III. The SINFULNESS of all self-gratulation is seen in the evil influence of it on others. Some it excites to imitations. Others it impresses with our insincerity, and so with an idea of the worthlessness of all religion. It prevents our exercising a good influence on others. Nothing more certainly shuts up a man’s power than the impression he may produce of his pride and self-conceit. Whatever we may win, one law appliesdon‘t boast.R.T.
1Ch 21:3.–The spirit that refuses good advice.
Joab was not always a good adviser. More than once he had led David into difficulties. But he was a skilful and bold statesman. He looked rather to the consequences and ultimate influences of political actions than to the maintenance of high political principles. In this case he feared more the penalty that would follow than the sin itself. But his advice was good. We may not say that even good advice is necessarily to be taken. Our judgment concerning it should be exercised, and our decisions upon it should be made. That which is absolutely good, or in a general way good, may not be the best thing at a particular time, or for a particular individual.
I. Good ADVICE MAY BE UNACCEPTABLE IN ITSELF. It may demand hard things or unpleasant things. It may be difficult to discern the grounds on which it is based. It may involve humiliations and confessions of mistake. It may bring heavy responsibilities. It may unduly strain feeling. It may be quite different from the advice we expected. It may seem, to our judgment, anything but good.
II. GOOD ADVICE MAY BE UNACCEPTABLE THROUGH THE PERSON WHO GIVES IT. We estimate the value of advice by the giver. Our confidence in him gives quality to his advice. Probably David was at this time so annoyed with Joab that his eyes were blinded, and he could not see how wise his counsel was. To judge advice by the giver is, as a rule, quite safe; but care is needed lest prejudice should prevent our recognizing the good in the counsel of those we dislike, and lest undue affection should prevent our seeing the error in the advice of those whom we may personally esteem. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend,” etc.
III. GOOD ADVICE MAY BE UNACCEPTABLE THROUGH THE STATE OF MIND OF THE PERSON WHO RECEIVES IT. There may be a proud unwillingness to receive advice at all; an over and undue self-reliance. There may be a strong purpose and resolve against which the advice goes, as in David’s case.
So we learn that to be proper recipients of good advice from our fellow-men, or from God’s Word, we need to win and to keep the humble, open heart.R.T.
1Ch 21:7, 1Ch 21:8.–Judgment revealing iniquity.
In these verses it is noted that God’s judgment on sin revealed the sinfulness of his doings to the sinner. “God is known by the judgment that he executeth.” Still, it is largely true that men do not see their sin in its proper light until they come under the sufferings which it involves. Illustrate by the licentious man and the drunkard. God’s plan is to affix consequences to sin, and make these always to he of an afflictive and distressing and humiliating character, so that by them the character and quality of sin might be shown up. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Illustrations are at hand in Old Testament history, ordinary national histories, and modern life. “Though hand join in hand, the sinner shall not go unpunished.” The consequences of sin come in a great variety of forms, but always with precise adaptation to the moral purpose which God holds in view in sending them. If the sin be only that of a man as an individual, the consequences may come wholly on the man’s body. If the sin be that of a man as a father, the consequences may be such as will affect the family. And if the sin be that of a man as a king, we may reasonably expect that the consequences will reach to affect the nation. And this is the case of David which is now before us for consideration. An act is right or wrong, according to God’s eternal laws, whoever does it; but acts gain some of their precise qualities through the relational or representative character of the persons who do them; and this often affords the true explanations of the particular judgments that attend them.
I. DAVID‘S SIN. His act, considered apart from his state of mind and his purpose, cannot be called wrong. We at least are familiar with the idea of taking census, and understand it to be a necessary attendant on orderly government. Two things aid us in recognizing David’s sin.
1. The sentiment of Eastern peoples concerning a census; they regarded it as imperilling their liberty, and as a state device for inflicting on them a tyrannous taxation.
2. David was not an independent sovereign; he was Jehovah’s prince; and such a work as this should only have been undertaken at the direct command of the true King. In a previous sketch, on 1Ch 21:2, the precise character of David’s act has been shown. His purpose was vain-glory. He would boast of the great kingdom he had founded; so he utterly failed from the theocratic kingship with which he had been entrusted. And his sin was that of the king; it was part of his government; and, therefore, it affected the people whom he governed, and, the consequences fell on him through them, just as the judgments on parental sin come on parents through their children.
II. ITS CONSEQUENCES IN THE DIVINE ADMINISTRATION. These were apparently special. Gad, God’s prophet, announced the impending judgments, bidding David select which of them should fall. Bat this speciality is only in appearance, and it is designed to be illustrative of the ordinary and orderly judgments which are surely wrought out in God’s providences. Sometimes God permits us to trace processes, but it is only that we may gain full conviction of the essential connections between sin and suffering. Much is made in our day of the working of law in nature. It would be altogether healthier and better for us to make much of the working of law in morals. No law is so absolute as this one: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.”
III. THE REVEALING POWER OF SUCH CONSEQUENCES. That is, their power to disclose and impress the character of men’s sins, as viewed by God. In the narrative before us, the impressions made on the king (1Ch 21:8), on the people, and, through these, upon us, may be illustrated.
The mission of all judgments and so-called calamities is here shown. The revelations which they make are
(1) a vindication of God;
(2) a gracious aid to a worthy apprehension of God; and
(3) the only way to secure our due restoration to a right mind and right relations.R.T.
1Ch 21:9-13.-An appalling offer and a wise choice.
The details may be given as explained in the Expository portion of this Commentary. Famine, war, and plague are the three ordinary Divine agencies used for the judgment of nations. Each affects numbers and arouses national feeling. Very seldom, indeed, does God make men the offer of a choice of punishments; and we can fully understand that it would not be consistent with his honour so to do. Then why did he do it in this particular case? Because this was special, and designed to bear mainly on the recovery of a good man’s full trust in God. God cannot usually make offers to men, because there is no good and right feeling in them to which his offer may appeal. God could make such offer to David, because bin was only a temporary aberration and failure from the true spirit and full loyalty. Even in the matter of his own judgment, God may take David, the “man after his own heart,” into his counsel.
I. THE POINT OF THE THREEFOLD OFFER. It tested David’s trust in God. Would he prefer judgment which came very evidently through human agency, or would he prefer judgment which was plainly sent direct from God? We know that pestilence is as truly due to human neglect and error as is famine or war; but, in the sentiment of David’s time, plague was the direct visitation of God.
II. THE POINT OF DAVID‘S CHOICE. (1Ch 21:13.)
1. He felt that he could better trust the direct Divine agency than man’s ministry, which might be toned with ill feeling.
2. There was more hope of the limitations and qualifications of mercy in God’s dealings than in man’s.
3. The national honour and the integrity of the kingdom and the stability of the throne would not be so seriously affected by a plague, as they would be by the temporary triumph of the national foes.
When we are, with David, fully willing to fall into God’s hands, then the Divine judgments may be graciously tempered, and even removed.R.T.
1Ch 21:11, 1Ch 21:12.-The necessary connection between sin and judgment.
Prove and illustrate the universality of the connection. Illustrations may be found in every age and every sphere. See the idea of a Nemesis; and show that pointing out this connection is the commonplace of the moral and religious teacher.
I. SEE CLEARLY WHAT SIN IS. Give the theories about sin; but apart from theory, or doctrine, endeavour to understand what sin is
(1) in itself;
(2) in its power of growth;
(3) in its subtle and mischievous influences;
(4) in its interference with the Divine order;
(5) in its relations with the Divine Law;
(6) in the sight of God, as intimated in the Scriptures.
When a suitable impression is gained of what sin is, we are prepared to
II. SEE WHY IT MUST BE MET WITH JUDGMENTS. Because
(1) it beclouds man‘s conscience, and judgment alone removes such clouds;
(2) it subverts Divine authority, and such authority judgments alone can vindicate;
(3) it interferes with the Divine plans and purposes, and these judgments alone can rectify. The importance of the relation between sin and suffering, transgression and judgment, is best shown by the effort to realize what would now be the moral sentiments of men if this connection had not been assured, and men could now plead that any one of their number had ever sinned with impunity. So essential, indeed, is the connection, that when God grants forgiveness of the sin he seldom, if ever, interferes with the external consequences of the wrong. They are left to work on their severe but beneficent mission. Judgment, in both the small and the large spheres, is the minister, the angel, of the Divine mercy; and we may bless God for his judgments. Note also that Christ, as man, came, for man, under Divine judgments, because he was the Representative of sinners.R.T.
1Ch 21:15, 1Ch 21:16.-The sight of the destroying angel.
It is noted in these verses that the Divine judgment was executed by an angel, and that God and David both watched him carrying out his fearful commission. The sight produced different effects on the watchers, and these suggest useful thoughts and truths. The Bible idea of an angel seems to be that of an agent, other than man, employed to carry out the Divine purposes in the sphere of creation, and especially in this our world. If we accept this comprehensive conception of an angel, we shall understand how there may be angels of affliction, angels of death, and even angels of temptation, all engaged directly in the Divine service. There may be God’s angel of pestilence for the punishment of David, and God’s angel of temptation, or testing, for the purifying of Job. It may be shown that destruction by pestilence is on several occasions attributed to the ministry of an angel: e.g. destruction of the firstborn in Egypt and of Sennacherib’s army. This is still a familiar poetical figure. Sometimes unseen things have been graciously set within the sphere of the senses, in order to help men to feel the reality of the unseen. Angels are unseen beings; the Divine workings are largely secret and unseen; but it pleases God to set his people sometimes “within the veil;” or, we may say, “behind the scenes;” or down below among the machinery, so that they may gain for themselves, and give to others, fitting impressions of the reality of the Divine working. For a similar reason God, the infinite and spiritual Being, is spoken of under human figures, as though he were a man, doing a man’s deeds and feeling a man’s feelings. Some explanation of anthropomorphism and anthropopathism may here suitably be given. In the verses now for consideration, we find a double vision and a double repentance. God saw the angel and repented, so did David.
I. A DOUBLE VISIONGOD‘S AND MAN‘S. It is precisely noticed that as the angel was engaged in his work of destruction, “the Lord beheld.” Here is set before us something more than God’s perfect knowledge of everything that happens. It impresses upon us his personal interest in his administration of human affairs; his immediate attention to the execution of the judgments he denounces; and his sensitiveness to the effects of his judgments on those who suffer them. So it convinces us of what we may call the paternity of God. We also gain the assurance that suffering, when it comes as penalty, can never get beyond God’s inspection and control. This conviction makes us willing, as David was, to “fall into the hands of God.” Compare our Lord, in his extreme suffering, commending himself to the “hands of the Father.” Further, it reveals to us the fact that God brings his pitying mercies into our very calamities. David also saw the angel, and by the sight was enabled distinctly to recognize the Divine agency in what otherwise he might have called a calamity.
II. A DOUBLE REPENTANCE. Give explanations of the Old Testament and New Testament uses of the term. Distinguish metanoia from metameleia. Begin with general idea of repentance as change of mind; reconsideration with a view to a new course of conduct. Show in what senses the term can be applied to God, and not to man; to man, and not to God. Especially show that m God s changes of action, or relation, there is adaptation to new conditions, without any regret, conviction of mistake, or sense of wrong. In the case before us God repents, in the sense of recognizing a sufficient fulfilment of his purpose in the judgment, and so the possibility of relieving Israel of the plague. David repents in a wholly different sense. He is aroused to full conviction of his sin, and humbles himself before God in solemn confessions. David now sees the connection between suffering and sin; the relation of one man’s sin to many men’s sufferings; and above all, the exceeding sinfulness of his own sin.R.T.
1Ch 21:17.–Conviction of personal sin.
For the particular character of David’s sin reference may be made to the sketch given on 1Ch 21:2. And for the kind of conviction which David cherished when acts of sin were brought home to him, illustration may be taken from Psa 51:1-19. His sin might have been the sin of David the man; as was his sin in the matter of Bathsheba. Or it might have been the sin of David the king; and so God regarded it, adjusting his judgments accordingly. When convicted, it is a point of exceeding nobility in David that he seeks to bring the whole responsibility upon himself, asking God to treat the sin as that of the man, not of the king. We may fix attention upon this point. In this instance David stood for and acted for the nation, without the nation’s consent. It is a most solemn thing for parents, masters, magistrates, etc; that they cannot always separate the official character from their acts; and they are responsible for the well-being of the children, the servants, or the citizens, whom they represent. Placed in such relations, men may act in ways that do not carry the feeling or wish of those for whom they stand; and so they may be the means of bringing upon them undeserved Divine judgments. The case of Jonah may be compared. The sailors’ lives were imperilled by his act, though in it they had taken no share.
I. MAN MAY BE OFFICIALLYOr even by his temporary relationsTHE CAUSE OF THE INNOCENT SUFFERING,
II. SUCH CASES MUST ALWAYS BE REGARDED AS EXCEEDINGLY PERPLEXING AND PAINFUL. See Asaph’s psalms, and the discussions in the Book of Job.
Ill. THE RIGHT–HEARTED MAN WILL EARNESTLY SEEK TO HAVE THE SUFFERING LIMITED TO HIMSELF, and to this end will be ready fully to acknowledge his personal guilt.
Impress that our relationships give the overwhelmingly painful character to our sins.R.T.
1Ch 21:24.–Right feeling concerning giving to God.
David apprehended that the value of a gift greatly depends on the self-denial for which it finds expression. Compare the very interesting scene of Abraham negotiating with the sons of Heth for the purchase of the field and cave of Machpelah. There, considerations of personal dignity prevented his taking the property; and he felt that he could not lay his beloved partner down, save in a place which was his by purchase. Here, in the case of David, the feeling is a different one, yet it is in full harmony with the sentiment of the elder patriarch; right religious feeling, the sense of what was due to God, prevented David from offering what was not really his by right of purchase. Personal dignity, and sensitiveness to what is befitting, both in social intercourse and in matters of religion, have their appropriate place; and their due cultivation is a part of Christian duty. Some account of the symbolical significance of the burnt offering may fitly explain why David chose this form of sacrifice as appropriate to this occasion. Its central and characteristic meaning may be thus expressed in the words of Ewald: “In this, man’s share in the consumption of the offering altogether vanished. The sacrificer consecrated to the Deity alone the enjoyment of the whole, and this not to punish himself, or because he was punished, on account of a special consciousness of guilt by deprivation of sensuous participation, but rather from free resolve and purest self-denial.“ Kurtz says, “The burning by fire was the chief point in this class of offering, and marked it as an expression of perpetual obligation to complete, sanctified, self-surrender to Jehovah.” The sacrifice was a solemn declaration that the offerer belonged wholly to God, and that he dedicated himself, soul and body, to him, and placed his life at his disposal. We treat David’s burnt offering as a typical religious service, and consider
I. THAT THE VALUE OF ALL RELIGIOUS SERVICE LIES IN THE SPIRIT OF HIM WHO BENDERS IT. A burnt offering is in itself a valueless and unacceptable thing; and so is every act of formal worship. Therefore in the unspiritual days of later Judaism, the prophets, as Isaiah, went so far as to say that God “hated“ the mere formalities of religion, and found them a “weariness“ to him. All a man’s gifts and acts must, like his words, carry a feeling, and express a desire and purpose. A man must utter himself in his words, or his words will be worthless. And so a man must utter himself in his offerings, sacrifices, and services, or God will say he “cannot away with them.” This point may be searchingly applied to our spiritual fitness for present-day services. Still it is true that our feeling must be the life of our worship.
II. THE BEST THING WE CAN EXPRESS TO GOD IS OUR SELF–DEVOTEMENT. This is the main idea of the burnt offering. This is the proper feeling cherished by David, and expressed in his sacrifice. It may be shown as the ultimate and comprehensive demand of St. Paul, in Rom 12:1, “I beseech you that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice.”
III. Such SELF–DEVOTEMENT CAN BE BEST EXPRESSED BY SELF–DENIAL. This David felt, and it led him to refuse to offer to God some one else’s self-denial. He would have it to be his own sacrifice, the act of his own self-denial. Show that what is given to God should be a man‘s own, and all the better if it is a man’s own by conscious effort, and if to set it aside for God involves some severe self-mastery. Such self-denials carry into expression the soul-feeling which alone is acceptable to God.
This subject lends itself to careful applications connected with modem religious worship and duty. It would be the dawn of a glorious day for the Church if every man felt as David did that he must utter his soul to God in gifts and offerings, and that these must come out of his “own proper good,” and carry a noble burden of self-denials.R.T.
1Ch 21:26.–Propitiation.
On a subject of so much complexity, it is hardly fitting to raise a full discussion from a merely incidental illustration, especially in view of the fact that this incident is in harmony with the Old Testament conceptions of propitiation, and fuller and clear doctrinal light has since come in the teachings of the apostles. Here we note that David offered himself to God by a sacrifice, as a man convicted, penitent, and recovered to a right mind, and cherishing a spirit of full consecration. This offering God was pleased to accept by a symbol of fire, and to make a ground on which he could be propitiated. With the distinct understanding that we do but touch one side or aspect of a profound and mysterious subject, and that to deal with a part fully recognizes the importance of the other parts which go to make up the whole, we suggest the consideration of the following points:
I. JUDGMENT IS THE DIVINE RECOGNITION OF A MAN‘S WRONG STATE. Carefully distinguish between a man’s wrong state of mind and will, and a wrong act. Both must be evil in the sight of God, but he must consider the wrong state as more serious than the wrong act. Judgment, coming as it must in the human and earthly spheres, will always seem to us to be the recognition of wrong acts; but when we come to see the deeper truth, we find it is Divine revelation of man’s state, and due punishment of it. This David found out. The plague seemed to be judgment on his wrong act, in ordering the “census.” When he came to his right mind, he found that it was Divine recognition of the wilfulness and self-glorying out of which the foolish command to take the census had come. Show that precisely the convictions which God’s judgments aim to produce are convictions of inner wrong, heart-evil, sin of will.
II. PROPITIATION IS THE OFFERING TO GOD OF A MAN‘S STATE RECOVERED TO RIGHT. This is the essence, but, as may be seen in David’s example, it may properly find outward expression in fitting acts. And this view helps us most materially in our apprehension of the propitiation made by the Lord Jesus Christ. In the light of his spotlessness and sinless obedience, we can see that, standing for man, as man’s Representative and Head, he presented to God man recovered to right.
III. UPON THE RECOGNITION OF MAN‘S RIGHT STATE, JUDGMENT CAN BE REMOVED AND THE SENSE OF ACCEPTANCE GRANTED. Because the end of judgment is evidently reached (for we can only conceive of Divine judgments as revelational and corrective) and mercy may have its free, unhindered path. And it therefore appears that all the humiliations and all the persuasions of the gospel have this for their supreme aim, to bring us men into a right state so that we may actually be represented by the infinitely acceptable Son of God and Son of man. For what Christ pledges on our behalf we are bound actually to be. But this further truth needs to be here stated, that Christ is now working in us, by his Spirit, that right state of mind and heart which he has, in his great sacrifice, pledged us to win.R.T.
1Ch 21:28.–Answer to prayer consecrating the place of prayer.
It is noted that David felt the threshing-floor to have become a sacred place, precisely because there he had gained the answer to his prayer. A similar feeling is illustrated in the case of the patriarchs. Abraham erected his altars where the signs of the Divine favour came to him; and Jacob raised his pillow-stone as a pillar, and consecrated his place of vision, Bethel, the house of God. We may recognize instances of the same kind in our own religious experiences. Certain places are, to our feeling, peculiarly sacred, and we know that they have gained their sacredness out of prayer-times, wrestling scenes, and gracious Divine responses. It appears that David had received answer to his prayer under two symbols.
(1) By the descending of heavenly fire for the consuming of his sacrifice, and
(2) by the sight of the angel reverently and obediently putting the great plague-sword back into its scabbard (1Ch 21:26, 1Ch 21:27). These outward signs did but assure the fact of God’s gracious answer, and should not be thought of as necessary to the answer, or we may find difficulty in realizing that nowadays God answers our prayers, and gives us of the answer an inward witness and not an outward sign.
I. THE FREEDOM OF SPIRITUAL WORSHIP FROM ALL LIMITATIONS OF PLACE. Every place is holy ground. God’s temple-dome is the “arch of yon unmeasured sky;” God’s temple-area is the floor of the whole earth. This point may be illustrated from the large variety of places which the holy men of Scripture made prayer-places: e.g. the inside of an ark, a cave in a mountain, the belly of a fish, etc. Or from the striking language of the Prophet Isaiah (Isa 66:1): “The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest?” Or from the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ, in Joh 4:21-23 : “The hour cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father The true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth,” This point being well established and efficiently illustrated, there may be shown
II. THE HELPFULNESS THAT MAY LIE IN LOCAL ASSOCIATIONS OF WORSHIP. There is a right and reasonable attachment to particular churches, places, and ordinances. Buildings and rooms gain a sacredness by their devotement to prayer and religious uses. And this feeling is to be encouraged, though we need to be reminded how easily it may become mere sentiment and superstition. The house of God where our fathers worshipped should be sacred to us. The sanctuary where the truth of God’s saving love first came home to our hearts must seem sacred to us. And it should be easier to win reverence, worship, and power of prayer in such consecrated places.
III. THIS APPLIES TO A MAN‘S PERSONAL RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES IN HIS PRIVATE RELIGIOUS LIFE. Illustrate from such instances as may be typified by an instance in the life of Luther. That spot in the forest where Alexis was struck down by the lightning, and he himself spared, must have been ever after a sacred spot to him. Or take a case of prayer under some particular pressure, as when a beloved one, in sickness, seemed to be passing away. The place where prayer was offered and answered seems never to lose the hallowing associations. Our lives, indeed, ought to be fall of consecrated spots, where we have raised, again and again, our pillars, inscribing thereon our Ebenezer, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.”
Impress that if our religion is to be, in any real and vigorous sense, personal, we must have made our own sacred place. The sanctuaries set apart for worship are most precious and most helpful, and the true hearts in all the ages have said, “Lord, I have loved the habitation of thy house.” But more is needed. Each man wants a temple of his own, raised in response to Divine goodness personally apprehendeda sacred place where, with the fullest emotion, he may offer his sacrifice of love and praise, even as David did.R.T.
1Ch 21:29, 1Ch 21:30.-The relics left on feeling from the humbling scenes of life.
“Some have supposed that the terror which David had felt at the sight of the destroying angel (1Ch 21:16) produced a bodily infirmity which made it physically impossible for him to go to Gibeon; but probably no more than a moral impediment is meant. David, knowing that by sacrifice on this altar he had caused the angel to stay his band, was afraid to transfer his offerings elsewhere, lest the angel should resume his task, and pestilence again break out.” David seemed ever after to see that sword before the tabernacle. It may be said that all Divine dealings have an immediate, and also a remote and permanent design. We are often dwelling on the immediate lessons that are impressed, but probably the best lessons are those which are learned by-and-by, after a while, when the excitement of the incidents has passed, and the whole is taken into quiet and serious review. Things seem so different when they are calmly looked back upon; ,aspects and relations come into view which we had not previously suspected. We know how true this is of our review of the lives of those whom we have known and loved; but it is equally true of the events and incidents of our own lives.
I. A MAN‘S SINS AND FAILINGS LEAVE THEIR TRACES ON CHARACTER AND FEELING. Even when they are forgiven, and a man is fully recovered from their influence, he cannot be rid of them altogether. There is a new reverence, or a fear of self, or a perilous openness to particular temptation, or a strange shyness left behind, of which the man will never be rid. Illustrative cases from Scripture and modem life may be given. A good Scripture instance, in which there was a humbling experience, but one free from the bitterness of personal sin, is that of King Hezekiah (see Isa 38:15, “I shall go softly all my [spared] years in the bitterness of my soul”).
II. SUCH CONTINUED FEELING INSENSIBLY GUIDES FUTURE CONDUCT. This is seen in the case of David. Perhaps he hardly admitted to himself what it really was that kept him from going to inquire of God at Gibeon. And so we find in our fellow-men and in ourselves singular hesitations; we feel difficulties and shrink back, when there seems no real occasion. We cannot tell others, we hardly like to admit to ourselves, that it is the relic of some great stumble, or even fall and sin and shame; the very real ghost of our former ill. Compare the man who, late in life, said, remembering his riotous youth-time, “I would give my right arm if I could be quit of the evils left in thought from my youthful sins.”
III. SUCH CONTINUED FEELING INDICATES A CONTINUED SANCTIFYING WORK, For God graciously uses, not merely things themselves, but their after-effects. No influence has its bare limits. The after-effects may differ greatly in different dispositions, but some of God’s best work in our hearts and lives is done by means of them. This may be illustrated by the after-influence exerted on the Apostle St. Peter by his sad and shameful fall. And David expresses this continuous sanctifying influence of remembered humblings when he says, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now will I keep thy Word.”
Apply especially to that great work of sanctifying, the producing of the humility of the true dependence. Show that it is most perfectly wrought in the fallen and forgiven, who ever live in the solemn shadow of the great experience.R.T.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
1Ch 21:1. Satan stood up An adversary stood up. Le Clerc. See the note on 2Sa 24:1; 2Sa 24:25. Bishop Warburton observes (perhaps the reader will think with rather too much refinement) upon this passage as follows: “This evil Being [Satan] was little known to the Jewish people till about this time: their great lawgiver, where he so frequently enumerates and warns them of the snares and temptations which would draw them to transgress the law of God, never once mentions this capital enemy of heaven: but as the fulness of time drew near, they were made more and more acquainted with this their capital enemy. When Ahab was suffered to be infatuated, (see on 1Ki 22:19; 1Ki 22:53.) Satan is not recorded by name. On the return from the captivity we find him better known, and things are then ascribed to him as the immediate and proper author, which were before given in an improper sense to the first and ultimate cause of all things. Thus in 2Sa 24:1 it seems to be said that God moved David to number the people: the anger of the Lord was kindledand he moved, &c. But in the passage before us, which was written after the captivity, Satan is said to have moved David to this folly: for his history having an inseparable connection with the redemption of mankind, the knowledge of them was to be conveyed together; and now their later prophets had given very lively descriptions of the Redeemer, and the other attendant truths.” Div. Leg.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
. The Census and the Plague: 1 Chronicles 21
1Ch 21:1.And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel. 2And David said unto Joab, and to the rulers of the people, Go, number Israel from Beersheba even to Dan; and bring it to me, that I may 3know their number. And Joab said, The Lord add to His people an hundredfold as many as they are. Are they not, my lord the king, all my lords servants? Why doth my lord require this thing? Why shall it be a trespass 4to Israel? But the word of the king prevailed against Joab; and Joab de parted, and went through all Israel, and came to Jerusalem. 5And Joab gave the sum of the number of the people unto David; and all Israel were a thousand thousand and a hundred thousand men that drew sword; and Judah was four hundred and seventy thousand men that drew sword. 6But Levi and Benjamin he counted not among them; for the kings word was abominable to Joab.
7And God was displeased with this thing; and He smote Israel. 8And David said unto God, I have sinned greatly, because I have done this thing: but now take away the iniquity of Thy servant; for I have done very foolishly. 9And the Lord spake unto Gad, Davids seer, saying, 10Go and tell David, saying, Thus saith the Lord, Three things I lay before thee; choose thee one 11of them, that I may do it unto thee. And Gad came to David, and said unto 12him, Thus saith the Lord, Choose thee either three years of famine; or three months to be driven1 before thy foes, and the sword of thy enemies to overtake thee; or three days the sword of the Lord and pestilence in the land, that the angel of the Lord may destroy in all the border of Israel; and now consider what word I shall return to Him that sent me. 13 And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait: let me now fall into the hand of the Lord; for very great are His mercies: but let me not fall into the hand of man.
14And the Lord sent pestilence upon Israel; and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men. 15And God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it; and as he was destroying, the Lord beheld, and repented of the evil, and said to the destroying angel, It is enough now, stay thy hand: and the angel of the Lord stood by the floor of Ornan2 the Jebusite. 16And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the Lord standing between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched over Jerusalem; and David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell on their faces. 17And David said unto God, Have not I commanded to number the people? it is I that have sinned, and done evil indeed; and these sheep, what have they done O Lord my God, let Thy hand now be on me and on my fathers house, and not on Thy people to smite.
18And the angel of the Lord commanded Gad to say unto David, that David should go up and set up an altar unto the Lord in the floor of Ornan the Jebusite. 19And David went up at the word of Gad, which he spake in the name of the Lord. 20And Ornan turned, and saw the angel; and his four 21sons with him hid themselves: and ornan was threshing wheat. And David went to ornan; and ornan looked, and saw David, and came out of the floor, 22and bowed to David with his face to the ground. And David said unto ornan, Give me the place of this floor, that I may build therein an altar unto the Lord: thou shalt give it me for the full price, that the plague be stayed from the people. 23And ornan said unto David, Take thee, and let my lord the king do that which is good in his eyes: lo, I give thee the oxen for burnt-offerings, and the threshing-rollers for wood, and the wheat for the meat-offering: I give all. 24And King David said unto ornan, Nay; but I will verily buy it for the full price; for I will not take that which is thine for the 25Lord, nor offer burnt-offerings without cost. And David gave to ornan for the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight. 26And David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt-offerings and peace-offerings; and he called upon the Lord, and He answered him by fire from heaven on the 27altar of burnt-offering. And the Lord commanded the angel; and he put his sword again into its sheath.
28At that time, when David saw that the Lord had answered him in the floor of ornan the Jebusite, he sacrificed there. 29For the tabernacle of the Lord, which Moses made in the wilderness, and the altar of burnt-offering, were at 30that time in the high place at Gibeon. And David could not go before it to inquire of God; for he was afraid before the sword of the angel of the Lord.
EXEGETICAL
Preliminary Remark. Relation of the Foregoing Account of Chronicles to 2 Samuel 24.As clearly as the mostly verbal agreement of our account with the parallel text of Samuel points to one common source of both, so numerous and important are also their deviations from one another. They chiefly consist of the following:a. The position of the history of the census in 2 Samuel is that of an appendix to the history of Davids reign already in the main completed. In our book, on the contrary, it closes only that section of the history of this king which refers to the external security and enlargement of his power by wars, buildings, etc.; but it thereby leads (in connection with the following description of his preparation for the building of the temple, 22.) to a new section, that by means of full details of his temple, state and war officers, is fitted to present a picture of the inner character of his government, b. The event is so introduced in 2 Samuel, that reference is made to a former plague, a famine (2Sa 21:1-14) which God had brought on the kingdom, so that Davids pernicious project of a census is represented as the direct effect of the divine anger (And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel; and He moved David, etc.), but, in our account, so that the whole is referred to a tempting influence of Satan on David, and connected neither with that famine nor any former visitation of Israel under David (not, for example, with the insurrections of Absalom and Shebna, which, like the famine, are entirely unnoticed by our author). For the question, whether the representation of Satan as the moral originator of the census rests on the influence of the religious ideas of a later time, see on 1Ch 21:1. c. The census executed by Joab at the command of David is described pretty fully in 2Sa 24:4-9, but only summarily in our chapter, with the chief emphasis on the numerical result, and the notice of a special circumstance unmentioned in 2 Samuel, namely, that Joab, because the royal commission was repugnant to him, neglected to enumerate the tribes of Levi and Benjamin (1Ch 21:4-6). d. On the purchase of ornans (or, as the Keri is in 2 Samuel, Araunahs) floor and the sacrifice by David, our text (1Ch 21:19-27) is more full than 2Sa 24:19-25. e. The statement, forming the close of our account and its connection with what follows, regarding the selection of the floor of ornan for the constant place of sacrifice by David (and for the site of the temple), in 1Ch 21:28-30, is wholly wanting in 2 Samuel 24, as, indeed, an express reference to the fact that that place attained a special sacredness under David by the angelic appearance and the sacrifice during the plague is absent there, while the whole occurrence is presented under the prevailing view of such a judicial punishment as the rebellions of Absalom and Shebna, and the famine already reported there, but by our author entirely omitted. That the most of these deviations are occasioned by the peculiar pragmatism and the special tendency of the author of the books of Samuel on the one hand and of the Chronist on the other, is already apparent from this brief survey, and will receive further confirmation from the following exposition.
1. The Census, its Occasion and Effect: 1Ch 21:1-6.And Satan stood up against Israel. That, instead of the divine anger, here Satan, the personal evil principle (see on Job 1:6; Job 2:1), is named as the hostile power that occasioned the pernicious expedient of the census, is now usually explained (even by Keil) as a later idea of the Israelites, and accordingly reckoned among the proofs that our book was composed after the exile. That this view is at least hasty, if it does not involve an error, is plain when we reflect1. That the way in which the prologue of the book of Job presupposes the idea of Satan, as long naturalized in the belief of Israel, speaks for the origin of this idea, not only before the exile, but before the time of Solomon; 2. That passages such as Gen 3:1 ff. and 1Ki 22:19 ff., though the name does not occur in them, show that the materials of this idea arose from that early time; and 3. That to the parallel passage 2 Samuel 24, though not using the name, the notion of an intervention of Satan in the temptation of David is by no means foreign; indeed, even a positive hint of this is implied in it. ew. and Wellh. justly assume that in the verb used, 2Sa 24:1, , provoked, lies an allusion to a personal tempting power, which cannot be God or the divine anger;3 that, indeed, according to the original, now mutilated, text of Samuel, probably was the subject of .And provoked David to number Israel. The injury of the census, indicated by this expression, rests on this, that such an undertaking in and of itself counted as an act exciting the anger of God, and therefore demanding propitiation (comp. the expiatory customs in the enumerations of the Romans, according to Valerius, Maximus, Varro, and Livius, as also that census instituted by Moses, Exo 30:11-16., which did not provoke God, only because the money collected by it as a gift to the tabernacle had a holy purpose, and therefore an expiating significance in itself). But a special wrong and blame was attached to the census of David, because it was a work of proud boastfulness and wicked haughtiness, not valuing, but over-valuing, his own power and greatness (comp. Joabs warning, 1Ch 21:3). The measure can scarcely be regarded as an expression of despotic wilfulness and tyrannic oppression of the people, or as a preparation for the imposition of an oppressive war tax or other tribute (Berth., etc.), or even as expressive of a lust for warlike conquest in the king (J. D. Mich.; comp. Kurtz in Herzogs Real-Encyl. iii. 306); at least the text in nowise indicates that blame was attached to it on any of these grounds.
1Ch 21:2. Go, number Israel from Beersheba even to Dan, the usual formula to designate the land of Israel in all its length; comp. Jdg 20:1; 1Sa 3:20; 1Ki 4:25, etc. The plain customary phrases: Go, number ( ), are simplifying and explanatory for those selected in 2 Samuel: (specially addressed to Joab) and (including the assistants of Joab in the enumeration, the captains or commanders of the army).And bring it to me, that I may know their number, the number of the Israelites.
1Ch 21:3. Joabs Warning.The Lord add to His people a hundredfold as many as they are. In 2 Samuel stands, in accordance with the preference of this author for repetitions of the same phrase (comp. 1Sa 12:8), a double , so many as they are, so many as they are, a hundredfold, or more briefly: so and so many as they are a hundredfold. For the present simpler expression, comp. Deu 1:11.Are they not all . . . my lords servants? Does any one doubt that this great multitude of people is subject to thee? Will any one check thy joy in the greatness and power of thy kingdom? This question is wanting in the often deviating text of Samuel, in place of which are the words: that the eyes of my lord the king may see it (the hundredfold increase of the people).Why shall it be a trespass to Israel?a trespass () that brings divine punishment on the people instead of thee, the king, who art guilty of this wicked haughtiness.
1Ch 21:4. But the word of the king prevailed against Joab, literally, was strong above Joab (which form is perhaps to be restored in 2 Samuel in place of the present ), overcame his resistance (Luth.: succeeded against Joab); comp. 2Ch 8:3; 2Ch 27:5.
1Ch 21:5. And all Israel were a thousand thousand and a hundred thousand men that drew sword, literally, that bare the sword; comp. Jdg 8:10; Jdg 20:2; Jdg 20:15; Jdg 20:17; Jdg 20:46, etc. The number 1,100,000, compared with the 800,000 menatarms in 2Sa 24:9, involves an actual deviation, which either depends on an ancient variety in the traditions concerning the numerical result of the census, or what is more probable, must be derived from a confusion of the numbers; comp. the cases of this kind cited in the Introd. 6, No. 5. The difference in the number of the Jewish men-at-arms is smaller, in which the 500,000 in 2 Samuel is merely a round number, for the more exact one, 470,000, contained in our text. Moreover, differences in the later traditions might the more easily arise in this Davidic census, because it was merely oral, as, according to 1Ch 27:24, the result was not entered in the annals of the kingdom. The general correctness of the account, that Israel then numbered about a million, and Judah about half a million warriors, is warranted by the communications of the author, which attest even for much later times the extraordinary density of the population in the formerly so fruitful land of promise. And that the actual army of David, 1Ch 27:1 ff., amounted only to 288,000 men, by no means contradicts the present statement relative to the total number of men fit to bear arms; comp. our remark on 1Ch 4:18.
1Ch 21:6. But Levi and Benjamin he counted not among them; for the kings word was abominable to Joab; on account of the reluctance with which he obeyed the command of the king, the numbering was not quite completed: it was stopped, perhaps at the kings command, before Benjamin, the last of the tribes to be numbered, was taken in hand; comp. the more exact statements in 2Sa 24:5 ff. concerning the order pursued by the commission under Joab, that, starting from the southern tribes east of Jordan, went round over the north of the land to the south of Judah, and thence arrived at Jerusalem. As no time remained for the numbering of Benjamin (comp. 1Ch 27:23 f.the express statement that the numbering was not completed; also Josephus, Antiq.vii 13. 1 Chronicles 1 : . ) so the tribe of Levi was omitted on account of its legal exemption from numerations for political or military objects (comp. Num 1:47-54). In the present statement, therefore, there is nothing incredible; and neither its absence in 2 Samuel, nor the circumstance that the Chronist, instead of the unfinished state of the census, puts forward in his subjective pragmatism the reluctance of Joab as the cause of the omission of those tribes, justifies the suspicions entertained by de Wette and Gramberg against it. Comp. Keil, Apologet. Versuch, p. 349 ff.
2. The Divine Displeasure with the Numbering of the People by the Voice of the Seer Gad: 1Ch 21:7-13.And God was displeased with this thing, literally, and it was evil () in Gods eyes for this thing: the same construction appears in Gen 21:22; usually without before the displeasing object, Gen 38:10; 2Sa 11:27, etc.And He smote Israel. This is not so much an anticipation of that which is narrated 1Ch 21:14 ff., as a generalizing description of the mode in which Gods anger took effect on Israel. It does not appear that the words are to be amended (Berth.), according to 2Sa 24:10 : , and the heart of David smote him. We have here simply two modes of narrative, one of which regards more the human thought and deed, the other more the divine.
1Ch 21:10. Three things I lay before thee, concerning thee, with thee, laying the choice before thee. Wellh. justly declares, not the strange of Samuel, but our to be original (against Berth.).
1Ch 21:12. Either three years of famine. This time is certainly the original, not the seven years of the text in Samuel, which has arisen by the easy change of the letters ( for ), and finds its emendation in the Sept.Or three months to be driven before thy foes. What is here original, whether of our text (nom. particip. Niph.: to perish, be swept away) or in 2 Samuel, must remain doubtful. On the contrary, the following and the sword of thy foes to overtake (=so that the sword of thy foes overtake thee), is certainly to be preferred to the reading in 2 Samuel.That the angel of the Lord destroy in all the border of Israel. This enforcing addition to the third question is wanting in 2 Samuel, but must be no less original than that parallel addition to the second question. And the hendiadyoin: the sword of the Lord and pestilence, for the simple pestilence () in 2 Samuel, can scarcely be regarded as an arbitrary addition of the Chronist. Comp., moreover, with respect to the triad of divine judgmentsfamine, sword, and pestilencethe parallels, Lev 26:25 f.; 1Ki 8:37; 2Ch 20:9; Jer 14:12 ff; Jer 21:7-9; Jer 24:10; Jer 27:8; Jer 27:13; Jer 29:17 f., Jer 32:24-36, Jer 34:17, Jer 38:2, Jer 42:17; Jer 42:22, Jer 44:13; Eze 5:12; Eze 6:11 f., 1Ch 7:15, 1Ch 12:16; also Eze 21:19, where this woful triad is indicated by the figure of three swords; likewise Eze 5:17; Eze 14:13-19, Rev 6:8, where the triad is extended to a quatrain by the addition of beasts of prey (comp. still other appropriate parallels in my Theol. naturalis, i. p. 637).
3. The Judgment, and Davids Repentant Entreaty for its Removal: 1Ch 21:14-17.And the Lord sent pestilence upon Israel. That this pestilence continued from the morning even to the time appointed is stated in the precise account in 2 Samuel; likewise that it affected all the people from Dan even to Beersheba. Wellh. (p. 220) defends, perhaps not unjustly, the extended form of our first verse-member, which the Sept. presents, as original: And David chose the pestilence; and when the days of wheat harvest came (comp. 1Ch 21:20), the plague began among the people.
1Ch 21:15. And God sent an angel to Jerusalem. The without the article, an angel, is strange, as the angel in question, 1Ch 21:12, was named before. Berth. gives the preference to the text 2Sa 24:16 : And the angel stretched out his hand to Jerusalem, whereas Movers (p. 91) defends our text as original. Perhaps neither text now contains exactly and fully the original, whether we amend, with Keil: And the angel of God stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem, or declare the restoration of the original now impossible (with Wellh.).And as he was destroying, the Lord beheld, and repented of the evil; that is, as soon as the angel had begun to destroy, Jehovah considered, and repented that He had decreed the heavy stroke. On this repentance of God, comp. Gen 6:16; Exo 32:14; Jer 42:10; Jon 3:10; Psa 106:23.It is enough now, stay thy hand. Notwithstanding the acc. distinct. over , this word is to be connected with the following , and taken in the sense of enough (sufficit); comp. Deu 1:6; 1Ki 19:4. Against Berth., who in 2Sa 24:16 connects with , and regards this a great mass of people as the original reading, see not only Keil, but also Wellh.And the angel of the Lord stood by the floor of ornan the Jebusite. That this ornan (or Araunah, as the Keri writes his name in 2 Samuel; comp. Crit. Note here) had been king of the Jebusites cannot be inferred from 2Sa 24:23, as the word there is either to be erased, with Then., or (with Bttcher and Wellh.) to be referred by emendation to David (there addressed by Araunah). That the floor of ornan was on Mount Moriah, the subsequent site of the temple, north-east of Zion, is stated in the sequel; see 1Ch 21:28 ff.
1Ch 21:16. And David . . . saw the angel of the Lord standing between the earth and the heavens. This whole verse, as also 1Ch 21:20, with the statement of the hiding of ornan and his four sons before the angel, and 1Ch 21:26, with the mention of the fire coming down from God on Davids offering, are wanting in the shorter and simpler account in 2 Samuel. These may be called embellishments of tradition, but they are not to be regarded as inventions of our historian (against Berth., etc.).And David and the elders . . .fell on their faces. The mention of the elders is wanting in 2 Samuel, but is not the least strange, as it was a solemn act of expiation and penitence on behalf of the whole nation. Comp. also the mention, 2Sa 24:20, of the retinue of servants accompanying the king when he went to ornan.
1Ch 21:17. Have not I commanded to number the people? In 2 Samuel the prayer of David is much briefer. But for this very reason the attempt of Bertheau to show that our text here and in the sequel arises from the effort to explain and improve the other text is altogether unjustified. Neither are the present words corrupted from those in Samuel: , nor is to be changed into a supposed original , and I, the shepherd, have done wrong; for the question: but these sheep, what have they done? is easily understood without the previous mention of the shepherd; comp. Psa 95:7, c. 3, etc.
4. The Purchase of Ornans Floor, and the Offering of the Burnt-Sacrifice there: 1Ch 21:18-27.
1Ch 21:20. And ornan turned. So is certainly to be translated (comp. 2Ki 20:5; Isa 38:5; and such New Testament passages as Luk 22:61, etc.), not returned, as Bertheau does against the context, at the same time defending the conjecture that is corrupted from .And ornan was threshing wheat, a clause wanting in 2 Samuel, but certainly original, which is confirmed by the notice of the Sept. already mentioned on 1Ch 21:15 concerning the wheat harvest as the time when the pestilence began.
1Ch 21:22. Give me the place of this floor. So it is to be translated, not as in Luther: Give me space in this floor. The whole floor was necessary for the kings object; it is also all bought by him. The history of this purchase recalls in general the similar incident in the life of Abraham, Genesis 23, but does not necessitate the assumption that the recollection of Gen 23:9 affected the forms of the text, nor in particular that the twofold was taken thence.
1Ch 21:23. Lo, I give the oxen for burnt-offerings. Along with stands also 2 Samuel: , and the harness of the oxen, their wooden yokes, a certainly original phrase, that has only fallen out of our text by a mistake. The other text also requires the mention of the wheat for the meat offering, which can be no late addition.
1Ch 21:24. Nor offer burnt-offerings without cost, that is, without having paid the full price for them. The infin. after the finite verb as a continuation is not surprising; comp. Ew. 351, c. Here also Bertheaus emendations are superfluous.
1Ch 21:25. And David gave to ornan for the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight. Otherwise 2Sa 24:24, where David purchases the floor with the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. The one of these two contradictory statements is certainly corrupt, and more probably that in 2 Samuel, as fifty shekels of silver is too low a price; comp. Abrahams 400 shekels of silver for the cave of Machpelah, Gen 23:15. The sum of 600 shekels of gold appears, indeed, too high; but an over-payment corresponds better with the crisis than a much smaller price, which might have been interpreted as an act of mean covetousness. That the Chronist has intentionally exaggerated (Then.) is a conjecture as little to be justified as the different harmonizing attempts of the ancients; for example, that each of the twelve tribes must have given fifty shekels, whereby the 600 shekels mentioned by the Chronist were raised (Raschi), or that the 600 shekels are to be reckoned as silver, but to be paid in gold, and with fifty pieces of gold, of which each was = twelve silver shekels (Noldius, ad concord. Part. not. 719), etc.
1Ch 21:26. And David . . . offered burnt-offerings and peace-offerings. After the sentence corresponding to these words in 2Sa 24:25 is found in the Sept. an addition that anticipates in brief the contents of 1Ch 22:1-6.And he called upon the Lord, and He answered him by fire (or heard him with fire) from heaven on the altar of burnt-offering. For these words, to be understood according to Lev 9:24, 1Ki 18:24; 1Ki 18:38, 2Ki 1:12, and 2Ch 7:1, 2 Samuel has simply: and the Lord was entreated for the land (comp. on 1Ch 21:16); likewise for our 1Ch 21:27, with its mention of the angels sword returned into its sheath, the plainer and less poetical: and the plague was stayed from Israel.
5. Davids repeated Offering on the Floor of ornan, with the Reason: 1Ch 21:28-30.At that time . . . he sacrificed there; that is, repeatedly, frequently; Luther rightly: was wont to offer there. Only this sense of agrees with the sequel, especially with 1Ch 22:1.
1Ch 21:29-30 explain this selection of ornans floor for the regular place of sacrifice for the king more precisely, by referring to the older sanctuary at Gibeon, and to the apparent neglect of it; comp. on 1Ch 15:1; 1Ch 16:39 f.And David could not go before it, the tabernacle at Gibeon, and the altar there; comp. for in this connection, 1Ch 16:4; 1Ch 16:37; 1Ch 16:39.For he was afraid before the sword of the angel of the Lord; the appearance of the angel, with its desolating effects, had left in his mind an awfully strong impression of the holiness of the place, so that he did not venture to sacrifice in any other place. This interpretation only (comp. Berth.) suits the fact and the context, not that of various recent expositors, who wish to extract strange motives out of the words; for example, J. H. Mich. quia ex terrore visionis angelic: infirmitatem corporis contraxerat, or O. v. Gerlach: because Gibeon was too far away, or Keil: because Gibeon, notwithstanding the sanctuary existing there with the Mosaic altar, was not spared by the plague, etc.
Comp., moreover, for the various details of the present account, the evangelical and ethical reflections at the close of the exposition of this book.
Footnotes:
[1]According to the parallel text 2Sa 24:13 ( for ), rather flight. So the Sept., Vulg., and Luther.
[2] the Sept. renders here and in the whole chapter by , as it conforms to , the Kethib in 2Sa 24:16 (for which elsewhere there the Keri always stands). Our text has throughout invariably , which the Vulg. gives rightly Ornan, Luther wrongly Arnan.
[3]Comp. Volck, De summa carminis Jobi sententia, p. 33 sqq.: Hoc si tenes, Deum non sine causa populo suo atque ejus reui, suoerhienti illi quidem, succensuisse, Satanumque eumesse, qui, ut homines peopter delicta apud Deum accuest eorum pnas repetiturus, ita hoc efficiat, ut peccati pullulantis vis erumpat: difficultatem ita expedies, ut Davidem, quia Deus iratus pravitatis pnam irrogare voluerit ad infelix illud consilium adductum fuisse dicas diaboli divin voluntati inservientis impulsu, etc.Comp. also Hofmann, Schriftbew, ii. p. 437 ff., and Schlottmann, Das Buch Hiob, p. 38 ff.
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
This chapter represents David in a very different point of view from the former. There we beheld him most lovely in his humbleness before the Lord. In this, in a state of transgression, numbering his people. Here is an account also, of God’s visitation and David’s punishment.
1Ch 21:1
This memorable – transaction of the numbering of Israel, is recorded both in this place and in the 24th chapter of the 2d Book of Samuel. And the accounts given in both, serve to throw light upon each other. In the account given in the Book of Samuel, it is said, that the anger of the Lord being kindled against Israel, he moved David against them. In this verse the matter is explained. It was not the Lord that moved David, but Satan, that is, the, adversary – the tempter. James, the apostle, throws the best light upon this subject. Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man. But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust. Jas 1:13-14 . The sense is, that the enemy, taking advantage of God’s displeasure at that time against Israel, moved David to the dreadful sin of distrusting God, in counting the number of Israel; not considering that God saveth not by many or by few.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
David’s Census
1Ch 21:2
What was it that made David’s deed ungodly? The answer is that David’s act was a grievous forgetfulness of, and departure from, God’s purpose (an act in which the people acquiesced with their king). He appears to have been moved by the hope that he should find the people big enough to cope with the nations around them on their own ground. And the people themselves would appear to have shared David’s pride and ambition. Once they were a horde of freshly emancipated slaves. Now, a fixed people, they felt their feet, and would stand of their own strength.
I. In considering the leading lesson here taught, think for a moment (1) how unique that race was. Nothing is so wonderful in the history of the world as the survival of the Jews. They were in the midst of mighty nations which far outnumbered them, but which (as the centuries rolled by) all lost their place and power in the world, while the Jews remained. But (2) more is to be noticed. This peculiar nation, destined to survive with incredible vitality, produced One Who should spread His kingdom from shore to shore, not by the sword, but by the Word of Truth; and that process is going on. That nation has given birth to the most widely penetrating body upon earth, the manifold Church of Christ. The Christian Church came from nowhere unless it came out of the Jewish. It reads the Jewish Bible, and chants the Jewish Psalms. Its cradle was Jerusalem. Its first Apostles and teachers were all Jews. Its Head was a Jew Himself. And though the old Jewish community does not proselytize, its child, the Christian Church, does, with accumulating energy. It is the most conspicuously aggressive teacher of religion on the face of the globe, setting itself to convert every nation upon earth; its unconquered heart beats with desire and intention to go on in the belief that, after His own way and in His own time, the uplifted Christ will draw all men unto Him.
Thus the lesson is clear that David’s act was forgetfulness of God’s purpose. In seeking to realize his material forces, and count the swords which he could draw, he slighted that unseen vital force which distinguished his people, and descended to the meaner level on which those around took their stand. In the preservation of the Jews and the development of Christianity we see a Divine process which David ignored; the whole history shows the secret of the Lord, and declares that there is a power, often hidden, which fulfils its purpose with irresistible force.
II. But this is not the only lesson to be learned. It points us to some of those mistakes which men are apt to make at all times in the conduct of their society and their lives. Of course I refer to a reliance on numbers as a guarantee of stability and truth. I am not thinking of war alone. In national economy, and most especially in religion, the faith in mere numbers may prove to be disastrous, and the impotence of numbers demonstrated. The consent and unanimity of a thousand fools does not render the folly of one man harmless. On the contrary, it may arm it with power to do a thousandfold more harm. We should be very cautious in guiding our course by the weathercock of public opinion. No doubt it shows which way the wind blows, and indicates the presence of numbers; but the question remains in which direction does it blow, and how long will it last? The mariner does not sail before the wind unless it drives towards the haven where he would be. The radical mistake of David can be repeated by many a modern nation, and is most likely to be mischievous when led by mere party government. The great convictions and changes in history are irrespective of numbers. Again, a man who really gets hold of a truth is not more persuaded of it when it has been accepted by others. He may be pleased at, but he is not dependent on, their verdict. And a man who waits to see how a statement is received by others before he commits himself has no root in himself, being merely the slave of numbers. That slavery, worse than Egyptian, has arisen again and again in the world’s course. It shows itself in the discharge of business and in the profession of Faith up to these last days. It is the same deadly hindrance to which David exposed himself and his people. He, for a while, lost sight of the Lord of Truth and Righteousness. And so we are all tempted in the formation of our opinions and actions. We are all tempted to number the people to ask only, ‘What do others think?’
It is of the first importance that a man should be, and do, what he is, and does, divinely; that he should be true to himself, to the voice of his Father which is in heaven, Who never leaves His children to walk alone, if they will only take His hand.
Davids Sin in the Numbering of the People
1Ch 21:13
What was David’s sin in the numbering of the people?
I. The sin of David was self-confidence, pride in his own strength, and forgetfulness of the source of all his strength even of God.
II. It was the greater sin in him because he had such marvellous, such visible witnesses of God’s love and care and guidance.
III. When men dwell securely, in full peace and health, they grow to be careless in religion. We do not half know our mercies till we think them over, and hear what sufferings and calamities befall our brethren in other lands.
R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons, Series III. p. 150.
Reference. XXI. 13. W. H. Hutchings, Sermon-Sketches, p. 204.
The Sword of the Lord
1Ch 21:16
There are many points of interest and instruction contained in the account, from which our text is taken, of the numbering of the people by David and of the awful consequences of that act.
I. Why was it so Wrong: in David to Number the People? To count the strength of his people so as to know how many men, women, and children there were in the land seems to us a reasonable and natural course enough. Nay, more than this, we find a similar proceeding twice plainly and positively ordered by God. How was it, then, that God punished David so severely for doing the same thing that He had commanded Moses to do? The truth would seem to be that David’s sin consisted not in the act of numbering Israel, but rather in the spirit in which the act was done. So many things, harmless and even commendable in themselves, become offensive to God on account of the human motives with which they get mixed up. Thus in this matter of numbering the people there could surely have been nothing to make God angry had it been set about and performed simply for reasons of political or military expediency. So we must conclude that it was in the heart of David that the cause of Divine wrath existed. We can only discern the outer act; but God saw into the secrets of David’s heart, and there beheld, no doubt, much of which He disapproved e.g. pride, vainglory, over-confidence in human strength and resources.
II. God put before David a Terrible Choice. David was to choose between three years’ famine, three months to be destroyed before his foes while the sword of his enemies overtook him, or else three days the sword of the Lord, even the pestilence in the land, the angel of the Lord destroying throughout all the land of Israel. Now, these three dreadful scourges famine, war, and pestilence have appeared like black spots from time to time in the pages of the world’s history. Do what we will, they must reappear in our midst from time to time; we cannot prevent them. We know that, so far from their vanishing away altogether, as time goes on their continued prevalence in the world will be among the signs of the last days.
III. A Time of National Disaster or Calamity puts to the Test, as Nothing else can, the Various Characters of Men. Then, as at no other time, the difference between different people stands out clear and distinct. Each assumes his own separate individuality. Think, for instance, how in the presence of famine, war, or pestilence one man would go on still in his way unmoved, unaltered, persisting yet in his sins, not caring for the distress that prevailed around him so long as it did not touch himself. We can see another panic-stricken, craven, utterly helpless in his terror, his self-control and reasoning powers alike merged in his fear; he looks about with horror and dismay, his heart fails him with dread. Another, with kindness of heart that is natural to him, cannot bear to contemplate the sufferings of others; he bestirs himself and tries to do all he can in the way of help and succour. There are yet others; there is the practical man who keeps calm and cool; he recognizes the peril, but maintains his self-possession. He too takes a deeper, more searching view of the question. He traces the calamity to its true cause. He looks on it as a judgment, permitted by God, on wrongdoing and disobedience. The others look on it and accept it, some in one spirit and some in another, as a most unwelcome fact, and there they leave the matter. This man lifts up his eyes as David did, and sees, as it were, the angel of the Lord with drawn sword and outstretched arm. This is the true and the religious view to take of calamities and disasters; God allows them for the punishment of sin, and therefore shall they last as long as the world lasts because of the sin that shall remain and increase to the very end.
IV. There is a Further Point in David’s Conduct which calls for special notice. He did not lay the blame on other people. As a matter of fact, the pestilence was not the result of his fault alone, though in that fault of his a long series of misdeeds on the part of a perverse and stiff-necked people would appear to have reached their culmination. It is especially recorded that ‘the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel’. But David thought only of his own sin; the burden of that was quite heavy enough for him to bear without his turning his attention to the sins of other people. How different it often is! There are those who are quite ready to admit that temporal punishment follows on sin, but they mean in a general way; that is to say, they are thinking more of the sins of other people than of their own. There are those who, while they deplore the prevalence of vice and irreligion among us, and declare that thereby we merit the wrath of God, forget the secret sins, the evil thoughts that are lurking in their own inmost hearts, and adding just a little more to the vast aggregate of sin and wickedness at large in our midst. Is it so with us? Are we duly sensible of the inevitable personal responsibility that rests on each of us? Which is it that we hate most, sin in the abstract or our own sin? Can we say with David, ‘Even I it is that have sinned and done evil indeed’? or with the Apostles who, when our Lord foretold that one of them should betray Him, did not wonder which of the others it should be, but in humility and deep self-abasement asked, ‘Lord, is it I?’ In David’s penitence we see the essentials of real, genuine repentance.
Far-reaching Consequences of Sin
1Ch 21:17
The one thing that strikes us in reading the history of David always seems to be the quality of his character. He is an instance of the twofold possibilities of human nature. At one time we see him soaring to the highest conception of truth and goodness and love and purity, and at another time we see him sinking in the veriest mire of deceit and injustice and wrongdoing and impurity. And yet we are told that this man was a man after God’s own heart. And here is the explanation. ‘God knoweth whereof we are made, He remembereth that we are but dust.’ Well for us that it is so! If God were extreme to mark what was done amiss, who among us should stand before Him? But let no man think that God countenances evil. The seal of heaven is upon David’s life, not because he was a victim to some of the worst passions of our nature, but because his aspirations were towards the perfect likeness and perfect holiness of God.
I. Personal Accountability for Sin. David said, ‘I have sinned’. That was David’s impulsive acknowledgment. It was the sin of pride the sin of numbering his people that he might boast himself in the strength of his armies instead of reposing in the protection and the might of God. And David knew and felt what he had done directly it was done. ‘I have sinned greatly.’ Notice the personality of his guilt and the candour of his confession. He mentions nothing to exculpate his sin. And the same thing is noticeable in his other great cry. ‘I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me.’ A very little knowledge of human nature will show us that this is not at all a common attitude. It is hard to believe that the sin we commit is our own. We try all we can to shift the responsibility. We urge all kinds of pleas by way of self-exoneration. But whatever we may think or plead, sin is personal and guilt is personal. We like to group ourselves with others and feel that we are sinners as a class. Yet all is individual, all is incommunicable.
II. The Consequences of Sin. Now let us pass to the second aspect of the subject, viz. the unfortunate consequences of sin. It is evident that David felt the guilt of sin to be his own, from which he alone needed purging. But the consequences of his sin did not stop at David. To human judgment it must seem fair that in this respect every man should bear his own burden. Could Israel help the sin of their king? Yet thousands of men were stricken down in consequence with the misery of a pestilential death. David’s great soul would gladly have borne the full penalty if that had been possible. But his sin had wider consequences consequences distributed over the whole of his nation. It has been so from the beginning. It is part of the inexorable law of God that it should be so. By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin. God says, ‘I will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children’ the innocent children as we call them ‘unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me’. I want you to distinguish between the consequences of sin and the punishment of sin. There cannot be punishment where there is no guilt. Suffering there may be, but no punishment You and I will never have to bear the punishment of another’s sin, but we cannot escape the consequences of another’s folly, and others cannot help suffering on account of our sins and follies. It is this that adds to the heinousness of sin; it is this that makes our accountability to God so awful. The soul that sins may sink into the bottomless pit of perdition, but the influence of its sin will ripple on the eddying waters of life to the farther verge of eternity. The sinner may be truly penitent, and may be forgiven, but the consequences of his sin are beyond recall. ‘I have sinned, but what have these sheep done?’
References. XXI. 17. R. Hiley, A Year’s Sermons, vol. ii. p. 43. XXI. 28. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx. No. 1808.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
1Ch 21:1-13
1. And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.
2. And David said to Joab and to the rulers of the people, Go, number Israel, from Beersheba even to Dan; and bring the number of them to me, that I may know it.
3. And Joab answered, The Lord make his people an hundred times so many more as they be: but, my lord the king, are they not all my lord’s servants [In the place of these words we find in 2Sa 24:3 , “And that the eyes of my lord the king may see it,” a much more emphatic sentence]? why then doth my lord require this thing? why will he be a cause of trespass to Israel? [This clause does not occur in Samuel. It is perhaps added by the writer of Chronicles to show what was in Joab’s mind: “Why wilt thou, by numbering them in a spirit of vainglory, run the risk of provoking God’s wrath against Israel?”]
4. Nevertheless the king’s word prevailed against Joab. Wherefore Joab departed, and went throughout all Israel, and came to Jerusalem.
5. And Joab gave the sum of the number of the people unto David And all they of Israel were a thousand thousand and an hundred thousand men that drew sword: and Judah was tour hundred threescore and ten thousand men that drew sword.
6. But Levi and Benjamin counted he not among them: for the kings word was abominable to Joab.
7. And God was displeased [ Heb. And it was evil in the eyes of the Lord concerning this thing] with this thing; therefore he smote Israel.
8. And David said unto God [ 2Sa 24:10 ], I have sinned greatly, because I have done this thing: but now, I beseech thee, do away the iniquity of thy servant; for I have done very foolishly.
9. And the Lord spake unto Gad, David’s seer, saying,
10. Go and tell David, saying, Thus saith the Lord, I offer [ Heb. stretch out] thee three things: choose thee one of them, that I may do it unto thee.
11. So Gad came to David, and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Choose thee [ Heb. take to thee] either three years’ famine; or three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while that the sword of thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of the Lord, even the pestilence, in the land, and the angel of the Lord destroying throughout all the coasts of Israel. Now therefore advise thyself what word I shall bring again to him that sent me.
13. And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait: let me fall now into the hand of the Lord; for very great [ or, many] are his mercies: but let me net fall into the hand of man.
The Hands of God Better Than the Hands of Men
DAVID was tempted to number the people of Israel. He said unto Joab and to the rulers of the people,
“Go, number Israel, from Beersheba even to Dan; and bring the number of them to me, that I may know it” ( 1Ch 21:2 ).
Joab was a wise counsellor; in this case the wisdom was with the subject, not with the king. Joab answered,
“The Lord make his people an hundred times so many more as they be: but, my lord the king, are they not all my lord’s servants? why then doth my lord require this thing? why will he be a cause of trespass to Israel?” ( 1Ch 21:3 ).
The protest was disregarded. When kings are mad, who can stand before them? mad, not intellectually, but morally; the madness of the heart, compared with which mental lunacy is an unspeakable blessing. There are times when the soul seems to be given over to the power of the devil, when it is caught on every side, when religion itself becomes little better than a temptation to sin. Men are sometimes brought to suppose that they are doing things for the glory of God when in reality they are but heightening the crumbling pedestal on which their own little dignity is to be shown. David might have said to himself, I will see how many fighting men there are in Israel that can be brought up to the Lord’s cause in the day of battle; I have no wish to magnify my own strength, or to put a fictitious value upon my own position; in fact, I am not concerned about myself at all in this matter, my only object is to see how many qualified men might be called up to the help of the Lord in the day of battle. In saying all this David might assure himself that he was deeply concerned only for the Lord’s name and glory, and that nothing could be more unselfish than his godly concern for the welfare of Israel. There are what may be called subtle sins, as well as vulgar sins. A man may set himself in open opposition to God, and boldly say that he means to fight down the divine supremacy, and put a mark of dishonour on God’s throne; he may be mad enough and vulgar enough for that and defeat his own intentions by his exaggeration. We need not argue the case with such a man, for he is not the kind of character that does much evil in society; his very fury is its own best check. The drunkard who is rolling in the ditch is rather a warning than a temptation to other people. The thing to be noted is, that there are subtle sins sins which do not look like sins; sins that are done up in beautiful parcels, that have an inviting aspect, that come to men altogether in false guises, and take men unawares. There is a possibility of doing things that look well, and yet are bad; of encouraging ambitions, and strengthening tastes which, under a passable reputation, are eating away the substance and strength of our best life. It will be a mistake on our part to imagine that David exhausted the sin of counting, and that now arithmetical calculations may be made without trespassing upon the province and honour of God. It is easy for us to rise in petulant indignation against David, and to declare that he ought not to have counted his men; but let us beware, lest in so doing we provoke the spirit of David to retort that it is possible for us to count our money so as to disclose the very motive and intention which in him we condemn as vicious. Yes, there is an atheistical way of counting money. A man may go over coin by coin of his property, and look at it in a way which, being interpreted, signifies, This is my strength, this is my confidence; so long as I have all these coins it is impossible that I can get far wrong, or know much trouble; these will be my answer and defence in the day of accusation and adversity! The most harmless looking things may be done in a distrustful and self-considering spirit. David was undoubtedly giving way to low considerations; he was trying an arm of flesh; he was encouraging himself by a review of forces which he imagined to be invincible. God, who is jealous for the honour of his servants, and jealous for the honour of his own name, sent Gad, David’s own seer, to put three propositions before the king:
“Choose thee either three years’ famine; or three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while that the sword of thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of the Lord, even the pestilence, in the land, and the angel of the Lord destroying throughout all the coasts of Israel” ( 1Ch 21:12 ).
To these propositions David answered:
“I am in a great strait: let me fall now into the hand of the Lord; for very great are his mercies: but let me not fall into the hand of man” ( 1Ch 21:13 ).
Let us regard this answer as showing that in the saddest experiences of the heart, in the extremities of human guilt, in the allotment of penalties, and in the working out of law, it is better to fall into the hand of God than into the hands of men; that the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy, and that like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.
The doctrine is, that as sinners, as sinners before God, and as sinners towards each other, our highest hope is not in the incomplete and perverted mercy of man, but in the infinite mercy which is founded upon the infinite righteousness of God. We may, perhaps, help ourselves towards a clearer understanding of this doctrine by first considering that it is better to fall into the hands of the highest class of men than into the hands of the lowest; if this be made clear, it will give us a hint of how much better it may be to receive sentence from God than from the highest human authorities.
Take a debated legal case. In the first instance it may be brought before the local magistracy; but, very possibly, the result may be considered unsatisfactory by one party or the other, hence the case may be moved to the court above; there again dissatisfaction may be the result, and an appeal may be carried to the highest court in the land. The decision of that court carries with it the advantage that at all events nothing further can be done all that legal learning, acumen, skill, and experience can do, has been done. The result, even then, may not be satisfactory; still, by so much as the case has been carried to the highest tribunal, and pronounced upon by the highest wisdom, there is strong ground to rest upon. Not only so, there is a point beyond this; for by so much as a man wishes that there were yet another superior court to which an appeal might be made does he show how deeply graven upon the heart is the law that it is better to fall into the hands of the highest than into the hands of the lowest; that it is better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of men. It is quite true that the decision of the highest may not bring with it satisfaction to the mind; that is not the point; the one point is, that men do aspire to have their cases determined, not by the lowest, but by the highest authorities, and it is only by so much as they are persuaded that they have had access to those highest authorities, that they approach anything like a condition of satisfaction.
What is true in the law is equally true in all criticism. Take an amateur painter: as his work approaches completion, he permits his friends to look at it. His father declares himself lost in wonder; his mother unhesitatingly says that the work of her son is perfect; his kinsfolk generally admit that there is genius in the family. So much for one class of critics; but, inasmuch as the artist is aware that this is the very lowest class, it is impossible for him to be satisfied even with the most flattering commendation of his skill. Next come other competitors for fame; and they, as becometh incipient greatness, look on critically and coldly; and the amateur consoles himself under their censure, by finding in envious rivalry a full explanation of their reserve. Is the artist satisfied with the opinions which have been pronounced upon his work? Does he consider himself favoured of fortune, because his father and his mother have, without modification, accorded to him the tribute of their favour? Or does he consider himself condemned to neglect and forgetfulness, because men who are in the same position as himself have treated his work with coldness? He says, alike to the flattery and the censure, I have yet to be judged by the academicians; you are not the judges; they will say what the work is worth; by their word I abide. I cannot accept your flattery; I cannot be discouraged by your censure: I must appeal to the highest, and by the highest I stand or fall. Even supposing the judgment of the highest to be unfavourable, the painter knows that, morally, it is impartial, and, artistically, it is supreme; and by so much he is set at rest as to the value of his work. But suppose that all preliminary criticism is favourable, the wise artist will yet say, I must not rest content with this, it has not the full consent of my own mind; these people are not able to judge my work by the right standards: the great judgment has yet to be pronounced; all that has been said may be confirmed or reversed, and not until the appointed authorities have expressed their opinion can I feel at rest.
Take the case of the young public speaker. It will be for the advantage of such a man to be judged by the greatest orators which the country can supply. Do not let his audience consist of half-educated men, but fill the house in which he is to speak with the highest talent of the land. Even then, should the young man fail in his effort, there will be in his hearers a discrimination that can find out any sign or trace of power that may be discovered in his service: there will be an honourable treatment of his failings; and everything that he does that looks in the direction of power will be viewed with hopefulness and encouraged with stimulating words. It is better to be judged by the highest than by the lowest; men have less to fear when they act or speak in the presence of the noblest minds than when they are criticised and judged by men of inferior sagacity and culture. Constantly in life we are seeing the conflict of opinions, and waiting for the expression of the highest, and when the highest has been ascertained, society settles down into contentment and rest. On the other hand, until the highest has been made known, men cannot be quite at ease; the vexed question is still beset with perilous possibilities, and no man is foolhardy enough to build upon it with confidence and satisfaction.
In carrying these illustrations into the religious realm, we must distinguish between the principle and the accident. There is of course infinite disparity between God and the highest human authorities; those authorities are not infallible, even upon matters which come within the scope of their proper functions; judges may err in law; academicians may err in art; physicians may err in medicine; the one thing to be remembered is, that by so much as men are sure that they have appealed to the highest accessible tribunal, are they satisfied with the decision. We come then to the one great question of sin. How is sin to be met? How is sin to be forgiven? That sin must somehow be recognised and punished is made abundantly clear by all the arrangements of society. By common consent it has been determined to hunt down sin that affects our social relations; how is the great sin which affects the heart and disturbs our attitude towards God to be met? We may seek to punish one another, or to heal one another, but our punishments are mockeries, and our healings do not touch the disease. You may scourge a felon, but he is a felon still. When you have shut up the manslayer for life in the gloomiest solitude, you have not touched the spirit of murder that is in him. When we have sought to modify sin, to show that corruption is not so corrupt, and that there are spots of light even in the densest moral darkness, we have not really healed the heart which we have addressed in such vain words, we have only put over it a thin covering of lies which will be consumed; and the heart will be the worse for the delusion to which it has yielded. All human punishment is but negative. Human punishment is, in fact, simply a protest.
Why is it better that the sinner should fall into the hands of God rather than into the hands of men? In reply to this question, good use might be made of the many pleasing considerations which arise in connection with God’s wisdom, God’s righteousness, and God’s perfect knowledge of facts; but we shall include all these in a higher answer viz., it is better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of men, because in his whole treatment of human sin God is constantly seeking, not the destruction, but the salvation of the sinner. The punishment which follows sin is not mere punishment; it is not a bald assertion of the rights of law: there is a redemptive element in it; the rod itself conveys a call to the cross. God has never answered our sin merely by punishment. To have contented himself with punishment, strictly as such, would have been to proclaim his weakness. Nothing is easier than to measure sin by penalty, and to make an end of transgression by a visitation of the rod. All this, however, is weakness itself; it is impotent compromise; it leaves the great rebellion untouched. God answers sin not by his hand only, but by his heart. When we ask, How does God propose to encounter sin? He does not point to the spear of lightning, and say, So long as that spear is at my command the sinner shall not go unpunished; he does not refer us to the thunder of his power, and say, So long as I can avail myself of such resources the sinner shall be humiliated: all this would amount to less than nothing; it is negative; it is puerile, if it be considered strictly within its own limits; God, instead of confining himself to penalty, set up the cross, and shows men the sinfulness of sin through the depth and tenderness of his own mercy. Man seeks to magnify his own righteousness, by pronouncing sentence of condemnation upon other people. Man is apt to think that he will be considered virtuous if he speak loudly against other people’s vices. It is possible to have quite a genius in devising penalties, and yet for the heart to know nothing of true loyalty to virtue. Magistracy is one thing, righteousness is another. Law-making may be reduced to a science, but law-keeping comes out of the heart. All human legislation in reference to crime is of necessity incomplete, because it touches simply the overt act, and not the motive or the spirit underlying and explaining the life. All incompleteness is weakness, and weakness has but three courses before it it succumbs to an ignominious fate; it takes advantage of compromise; or it defends itself by exaggeration. All human penal law is ex post facto ; it is made after the crime; it is something that comes up to meet a certain class of facts; or by so much as human law is apparently anticipative, it is founded upon inferences and probabilities which make it really retrospective. Crime came first, the Statute Book came next. On the other hand, God’s treatment of sin was determined before the creation of man; for we read in the Holy Book of the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. The idea of redemption was established before the infliction of mere punishment could by possibility be accomplished. The cross is the first figure in the immeasurable past. Redemption lies at the very foundation of the divine government. It is no afterthought; it is not the device of a magistracy organised to put down public crime; it is the expression of the infinite righteousness and the infinite love of God.
Let us be clear upon this point, lest sentiments overrule reason. We are not to suppose that the punishment of sin is either unrighteous or inconsistent with the love of God. Sin must be punished. The law must smite. Sin punishes itself; it kindles a fire in the soul; it pierces the sinner with the sharpest sword. No man can do wrong without smarting for his iniquity, and all his smarting is a testimony that God is on the throne, that God is looking on, that the streams of his infinite life are flowing through the universe in one continual protest against all evil, and one continuous encouragement and benediction upon all good. We shall abuse the spirit of the text if we imagine that by going to God we shall escape the punishment of our sins. It is possible that some who have not been closely following our argument may say, Inasmuch as God deals so mercifully and lovingly with sinners, we shall leave our whole case in his hand and cast ourselves upon his mercy, in order that we may escape the consequences of our sin. They may say that, but let it be understood that it is not with the authority of the argument which we have been considering. It is more than a delusion, it is practical blasphemy. By going to God, we go to punishment; in appearing before his infinite holiness, we bring upon our souls a swift and sure condemnation of everything that is evil in our nature; but herein is the difference between the punishment man accords, and the punishment with which God visits the sinner who casts himself into his hands under the divine punishment there lies the great and infinitely precious fact that God is seeking the salvation of the sinner. The punishment is not merely negative. God’s government is not a mere magistracy. It is a moral dominion a government of the heart.
Need a word be added about the fallacy that men would deal more lightly with one another, if the whole question of punishment were left between themselves, because of selfish reasons? First of all, the suggestion is philosophically untrue; and, secondly, its moral unsatisfactoriness is obvious. The conscience would remain after the judgment. To deal lightly with sin is actually to commit sin. To tell lies to one another, by way of modifying each other’s guilt, is a method which carries its own condemnation. We must accept the great principle, that punishment can never lessen sin; that punishment is strictly negative; and that God alone can accompany punishment with a scheme of righteous and merciful redemption. It is good to fall into thy hands, gracious Father; when thou dost smite, it is that we, feeling the bitterness of sin, may desire to abandon it; when thou art angry, we see how true and pure is thy love; when thou dost terribly thunder against us, it is not that we may be driven to destruction, but that we may be called to salvation and peace.
What is wanted for a full acceptation of the principle of this text? I. A deep sense of sin. David had it, “I have sinned greatly in that I have done; and now I beseech thee, O Lord, take away the iniquity of thy servant, for I have done very foolishly.” If men have inadequate notions of sin, they will, of necessity, have inadequate notions of its treatment. If a man comes to God with a sense of his own integrity, with a spirit that is prepared to defend itself against the charges of God’s law, the gospel will be to him nothing but a mockery, an offer that is to be declined with indignation, if not with contempt, He does not need it; he imagines that he is superior to it; he is not at all on the moral line on which the gospel operates. But let the heart be smitten with a sense of evil; let the whole soul cry out with contrition and with despair; let the watchword of the life be, “O wretched man that I am!” then in that hour of extremity, when all nature gives way, when life is a burden, when futurity is a threat, let the proposition be made to such to fall into the hands of God, who is gracious, long-suffering, and infinitely merciful, and who will mingle with all his judgment elements of love, and the heart will feel that the proposition appeals to its very deepest needs, and that there is but one answer which can be made to an offer so infinitely gracious. To those who are overwhelmed with a sense of their own moral respectability this message will be without meaning or application; but to the broken-hearted and contrite, to whom sin has become the most tormenting problem of their lives, it will be a word of illumination and encouragement.
2. An unreserved committal of our case to God. David gave himself up entirely to God’s will. Mark the beauty of the expression, Let me fall into the hand of the Lord; not, Let me stand before the Lord and consult him, laying before him my opinions and pointing out a modification of his judgment; not that at all; God would not have treated with David on any such terms, nor will he treat with us if we come before him with a proposition instinct with such selfishness. We must fall into the hand of God an expression which signifies resignation, perfect trust in the divine righteousness and benevolence, and an entire committal of our whole case to the disposal of God.
Fall into the hand of God, O misjudged man! We are living in a world where misjudgments are being constantly pronounced upon our conduct; our words are mistaken, our tones are perverted, our whole spirit is misunderstood: what is our hope? and in what does our soul find rest? in the belief that God is over all, and that he himself pronounces the final judgment! In doing what is right and true, and doing it with individuality of method, we shall unquestionably expose ourselves to the censure of many critics. Men who profess to be men of taste, men who have made taste their idol, men whose taste is so highly cultivated as to have become the most odious vulgarity, will tell us that their whole nature shrinks from this or that method of doing things, and they will not be slow to suppose that because what they call their “whole nature” shrinks from something that bears our individuality, they are, therefore, very lofty and righteous judges! God knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust; and in the hour of his judgment he will look upon our life, not in such incomplete portions as are visible to the public eye, but in all the secret things, in all the hidden elements and forces that have gone to make it what it is; he will look at our life from its beginning to its end, and see how circumstances that never could be told to men have often asserted an overruling claim in our spirit, and caused us to assume attitudes and relations which have actually been distressingly painful to ourselves; he will judge not by the outward but by the inward, and if it be possible for his infinite love to find in us one redeeming feature, he will so magnify that as to cause our weaknesses and our failures, in so far as they have been mere infirmities, to be forgotten in the amplification of those features on which he himself can look with any degree of approbation. The whole world is in the hand of God, let us be thankful. The whole past is under his review, let us leave it with the assurance that his judgment is righteous. The whole future is under his control, let us pass into it with the steadiness, the quietness and the majesty of those who know that all the resources of God are placed at the disposal of all who put their whole trust in his wisdom and love. We can talk but inadequately about these things now; poor are our best notions about the goodness of the divine rule and the blessedness of falling into the divine hands. Not until we reach heaven can we fully know how good a thing it is to have given up our whole heart and life to the keeping and direction of our heavenly Father.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
XXII
THE SIN OF NUMBERING THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL,
ITS PENALTY, AND THE HISTORY OF ABSALOM
2Sa 13:1-39
On page 138 of the Harmony preserved in both 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles, is an account of another great affliction from God, and this affliction took the form of a pestilence in which 70,000 people perished. In one account it is said that the Lord moved David to number Israel, in the other that Satan instigated it. God is sometimes said to do things that he permits. There was a spirit of sinfulness in both the nation and king, on account of the great prosperity of the nation. Some preachers holding protracted meetings, and some pastors in giving their church roll, manifest a great desire to put stress upon numbers. So David ordered a census taken of the people. We search both these accounts in vain to find the law of the census carried out, that whenever a census was taken a certain sum of money from each one whose census was taken was to be put into the sanctuary. It was not wrong to take a census, because God himself ordered a census in Numbers. The sin was in the motive which prompted David to number Israel on this occasion. Satan was at his old trick of trying to turn the people against God, that God might smite the people. Oftentimes when we do things, the devil is back of the motive which prompts us to do them. It is a strange thing that the spirit of man can receive direct impact from another spirit.
It is also a strange thing that a man so secular-minded as Joab, understood the evil of this thing better than David. Joab worked at taking this census for nearly ten months, but did not complete it; be did not take the census of Levi or Benjamin. 1 Chronicles gives the result in round numbers, which does not exactly harmonize with 2 Samuel, one attempting to give only round numbers. Both show a great increase in population. After the thing was done, David’s conscience smote him, he felt that here were both error and sin; and he prayed about it, and when he prayed, God sent him a message, making this proposition: “I offer thee three things” [try and put yourself in David’s place and see which of these three things you would have accepted.] (1) “Shall seven years of famine come unto thee in thy land?” He had just passed through three years of famine, and did not want to see another, especially one twice as long as the other. (2) “Or wilt thou flee three months before thy foes, while they pursue thee?” He rejected that because it put him at the mercy of man. (3) The last alternative was, “Or shall there be three days’ pestilence in thy land?” And David made a remarkable answer: “Let us fall now into the hands of the Lord, for his mercies are great; and let me not fall into the hands of man.” I would myself always prefer that God be the one to smite me rather than man. “Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless millions mourn.” It is astonishing how cruel man can be to man and woman to woman, especially woman to woman. Always prefer God’s punishment; he loves you better than anyone else, and will not put on you more than is just; but when the human gets into the judgment seat, there is no telling what may happen. Before this three days’ pestilence had ended 70,000 people had died. The pestilence was now moving upon the capital, and David was going to offer a sacrifice to God and implore his mercy. When he saw the angel of death with his drawn sword, about to swoop down upon Jerusalem, then comes out the magnanimity of David: “Lo, I have sinned and I have done perversely; but these sheep, what have they done?” Who greater than David used similar language in order to protect his flock? Our Lord in Gethsemane. Thereupon God ordered a sacrifice to be made, its object being to placate God, to stay the plague, a glorious type of the ultimate atonement.
When I was a student at Independence, the convention met there, and Dr. Bayless, then pastor of the First Baptist Church at Waco, took this text: “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.” He commenced: “When the flaming sword of divine justice was flashing in the sunbeams of heaven, and whistling in its fiery wrath, Jesus interposed and bared his breast, saying, ‘Smite me instead.’ ” Bayless was a very eloquent preacher. But though our Lord interposed, yet on him, crushed with imputed sin, that sword was about to fall. His shrinking humanity prayed, “Save me from the sword!” But the Father answered, “Awake, O Sword, smite the shepherd and let the flock be scattered.” And here we find the type.
The threshing floor of Araunah became the site of Solomon’s Temple. It was the place where Abraham brought his son, and bound him on an altar, and lifted up the knife when the voice of God called: “Abraham, stay thy hand, God himself hath provided a sacrifice.” There Abraham started to offer Isaac; there the Temple was afterward built, and the brazen altar erected on which these sacrificial types were slain. I ask you not only to notice David’s vicarious expiation, but also the spirit of David as set forth in 2Sa 24:24 , page 141; “Neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the Lord my God, which cost me nothing.” That old Canaanite man was a generous fellow, and offered to give him that place for such a purpose and to furnish the oxen for the sacrifice, but David refused to make an offering that cost him nothing. Brother Truett preaches a great sermon on that subject: “God forbid that I should offer an offering unto the Lord that costs me nothing.” When he wants to get a really sacrificial collection; wants people to give until it hurts, he takes that text and preaches his sermon. We must not select for God that which costs us nothing. I will not say tens or hundreds, but I wills ay thousands of times in my life I have made such offerings where it cost me something where it really hurt.
History of Absalom. In the last discussion it was shown that there had been a number of antecedent sins in connection with Absalom: (1) It was a sin that the Geshurites had been left in the land. (2) It was a sin that David had married & Geshurite. (3) That he had married for State reasons. (4) That he had multiplied wives. (5) That he did not instruct and discipline Absalom. Absalom stands among the most remarkable characters of the Old Testament. He was the handsomest man in his day, according to the record. He was perfect in physical symmetry and body. That counts a good deal with many people, but here it is not a case of “pretty is that pretty does.” He had outside beauties to a marvelous degree. In that poem of N. P. Willis, he assumes that Absalom’s body is before David in the shroud, and says that as the shroud settled upon the body it revealed in outline the matchless symmetry of Absalom. Absalom had remarkable courage; there is nothing in the history to indicate that he was ever afraid of anything or anybody. Again, he had great decision of character; he knew exactly what he wanted; he was utterly unscrupulous as to the means to secure it. However, he was a man of most remarkable patience; he had passions and hate, and yet he could hold his peace and wait years to strike. That shows that he was not impulsive; that he could keep his passions under the most rigid control. The idea of a young man like Absalom under such an indignity waiting two years and then carefully planning and bringing his victims under his hand and smiting them without mercy! That is malice aforethought. He alone could make Joab bend to him; he sent for Joab, but Joab did not come; then he sent to his servant saying, “Set fire to Joab’s barley field.” That brought him! Spurgeon has a sermon on that. You know that a terrapin will not crawl when you are looking at him unless you put a coal of fire on his back. Absalom put a coal of fire on Joab’s back. Then, to show the character of the man, he could get up early in the morning and go to the gate of the city and listen to every grievance in the nation, pat each fellow on the back and whisper in his ear, “Oh, if I were judge in Israel your wrong would be righted!” There is your politician. Now for a man to keep that up for years indicates a fixedness of purpose, absolute control over his manner. Whoever supposes Absalom to have been a weak-minded man is mistaken. Whoever supposes him to have been a religious man is mistaken. He had not a spark of religion.
David’s oldest son, Amnon, commits the awful offense set forth in the first paragraph of this section. Words cannot describe the villainy of it, and if Absalom under the hot indignation of the moment had smitten Amnon, he would have been acquitted by any jury. But that was not Absalom’s method. He intended to hit and hit to kill, but he was going to take his time, and let it be as sudden as death itself when it came. David refrains from punishing Amnon. Under the Jewish law he could have been put to death at once, and he ought to have been, but David could not administer the law; seeing his own guilt in a similar case, stripped him of the moral power to execute the law.
You will find that whenever you do wrong, it will make you more silent in your condemnation of wrong in others.
We now come to a subject that has been the theme of my own preaching a good deal: “Now Joab, the son of Zeruiah, perceived that the king’s heart was toward Absalom,” but he also perceived that that affection was taking no steps to bring about a reconciliation, so he falls upon a plan. He sent a wise woman of Tekoa to find David, feigning a grievance as set forth here, who among other things said, “We must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again,” i.e., from one against whom our anger is extended, but in behalf of whom we are interceding. The fact that God had not killed him was proof that he was soaring him that he might repent. “But God deviseth means whereby his banished shall not be perpetually expelled.” The application intended is this: “Now David, you are doing just the other way. You have only a short time to live, and when you die your opportunities of reconciliation are gone forever. Imitate God; devise means to bring your banished one home.” David acted on this advice and sent Joab after Absalom, but he did not imitate God fully; he had Absalom brought to Jerusalem, but would not see him. Absalom waited there under a cloud for three years, and when he could stand it no longer, by burning Joab’s barley field he forced him to bring about a reconciliation. Absalom’s object in bringing about this reconciliation was to put him in position to rebel. He knew that the tenth son, Solomon, wag announced as the successor to David, and he was the older son, and under the ordinary laws of primogeniture entitled to the kingdom. So he determines to be king.
David at this time, as we learn from Psa 41 , was laboring under an awful and loathsome sickness a sickness that separated him from his family, from his children, and from his friends. This caused him to be forgotten to a great extent. It was a case of “when you drop out of sight, you drop out of mind.” While the people saw nothing of David, they were seeing much of Absalom; he had his chariot and followers, and paraded the streets every day, and his admirers would say, “There is a king for you! We want a king that is somebody!” David in retirement, Absalom conspicuous, making promises, and being the oldest son, captured the hearts of the people. Among these was Ahithophel. Then Absalom sent spies out all over the country and said, “When you hear the trumpet blow, you may know that Absalom is reigning.” He went down to Hebron and announced himself as king. When the word is brought to David that the people have gone from him, there seems to be no thought in his mind of resistance; he prepares to leave the city, leave the ark of God and the house of God. Leaving his concubines and taking his wives and children with him) he sets out, and upon reaching Mount Olivet, looks back upon the abandoned city, and weeps. A great number of the psalms were composed to commemorate his feelings during this flight. Both priests, Abiathar and Zadok, wanted to take the ark with them, but David sent them back, saying he wanted some there to watch for him and send him word. Never in the annals of time do we find a more lively historic portraiture of men and events than here. Each lives before us as we read: “Ittai, Abiathar, Zadok, Hushai, Ziba, Shirnei, and Abishai.”
QUESTIONS
1. How do you harmonize 2Sa 24:1 and 1Ch 21:1 ?
2. What was the sin of this numbering of Israel?
3. What was the lessons to preachers?
4. What was David’s course?
5. What was God’s proposition to David?
6. What was David’s answer, and reason for his choice?
7. How was the plague finally stayed?
8. What type here, and the New Testament fulfilment?
9. What was the site of Solomon’s Temple?
10. What historic events connected are with this place?
11. What great text for a sermon here, and who has preached a noted sermon from it?
12. Rehearse here the antecedent sins in connection with Absalom?
13. What was his physical appearance?
14. Analyze his character.
15. What was the lesson to preachers from the sin of Amnon and David’s attitude toward it?
16. What was the lesson for David from the woman of Tekoa?
17. How did David receive it?
18. To what expedient did Absalom resort, and why?
19. What was David’s disadvantage and Absalom’s advantage here?
20. What was David’s course when he saw that the hearts of the people had turned toward Absalom?
21. What was the nature of this part of the history?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
1Ch 21:1 And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.
Ver. 1. And Satan stood up against Israel. ] That is, The devil, as Job 1:6 Psa 109:6 Zec 3:1-2 . Satan signifieth an adversary. So the devil is to God and his people, Rev 12:9 ; Rev 20:2 an adversary at law a 1Pe 5:8 hating them with an inward, spiteful hatred, as do also his instruments. Psa 55:4 The Emperor Commodus – cunctis incommodus, saith Orosius; semper incommodus, saith Vopiscus, in vita Taciti – was commonly called the enemy of God and men, the very name of the devil. Howbeit God so chained him up, that, of all the emperors until Constantine, he was most favourable unto Christians, b by the mediation of Marcia, who favoured their doctrine, saith Dion; but especially by the overruling power and providence of God, who also had a holy hand in this that David here did: See Trapp on “ 2Sa 24:1 “
a A .
b Mountag., Act. and Mon., cap. 7, par. 115.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
1 Chronicles Chapter 21
But the next chapter (1Ch 21 ) shows us the effort of Satan, too successful, to entice David into what was a grievous sin, particularly in him – reckoning up the strength of Israel. Was he a Gentile then? Could David allow the thought that it was his own prowess, or his people’s, that had wrought these great victories? Was it not God? No doubt He had employed David and his servants. He had put honour upon them all. But it was God. Hence, therefore, David’s wishing to number Israel was a very grievous evil in the eyes of a worldly politician like Joab. It was not that Joab would trouble much about a sin, provided he could see any good result of it; but he could not understand how a man like David should compromise himself so deeply without the smallest change; for, after all, the numbering of the people would not bring one more man. Why, therefore, take so much trouble and run the risk of a sin, without any practical fruit? This was Joab’s reasoning. But the king’s word prevailed against Joab, and Joab goes on his mission and gives the sum of the number of the people. It was not completed, but he brought the sum.
“And Joab gave the sum of the number of the people unto David. And all they of Israel were a thousand thousand and an hundred thousand men that drew the sword; and Judah was four hundred threescore and ten thousand men that drew sword. But Levi and Benjamin counted he not among them.” The plans of men do not succeed, more particularly among God’s people. “The king’s word was abominable to Joab. And God was displeased with this thing; therefore He smote Israel.” This seems extraordinary at first sight – why God should smite Israel – but God was wise. It was Israel that became a snare and a boast to the king. Did he not number them? They roust be decimated now. God would reduce the number, and would make David feel that, instead of being a blessing to His people, he was a curse through his folly and his pride. David, therefore, was obliged to own to God, “I have sinned greatly, because I have done this thing: but now, I beseech Thee, do away the iniquity of Thy servant; for I have done very foolishly.”
But no! Confession does not always hinder the chastening of God. The mind of Jehovah was made up. “I offer thee three things,” said He: “choose one of them – either three years’ famine, or three months to be destroyed before the foe, or three days of the sword of Jehovah” – not of the enemy – “even the pestilence in the land.” David owns the great strait and perplexity of his soul, but he chooses the last; and he was right. “Let me fall into the hand of Jehovah, for very great are His mercies. Let me not fall into the hand of man.” David preferred – and justly in my opinion – the direct hand of Jehovah. What was secondary. he felt repulsive – the famine. He could not bear that God should appear to be starving His people and condemning them to this slow death; or, on the other hand, that the foe should exalt themselves over Israel. This was abominable to his soul. But that there should be an evident chastening inflicted by God’s hand, by the destroying angel – this he chose. “So Jehovah sent pestilence upon Israel: and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men.” In the course of it “God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it: and as he was destroying, Jehovah beheld, and He repented Him of the evil and said to the angel that destroyed, It is enough; stay now thine hand.”
This occurred by the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite, for the Jebusite was in the land. The Canaanites still dwelt in the land. It will be so till Jesus comes and reigns, and then the Canaanite will be no longer in the land. And, what is more, God marks His grace; for all is in grace here. It was there He stopped – the last place where one would have expected it – at the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite. Why there? Because there God meant to mark sovereign grace. “And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of Jehovah stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem.” God gave him to see this. “Then David and the elders of Israel, who were clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces. And David said unto God, Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered? even I it is that have sinned and done evil indeed; but as for these sheep, what have they done? Let Thine hand, I pray Thee, O Jehovah my God, be on me, and on my father’s house; but not on Thy people, that they should be plagued.”
Thus he takes the consequence of the sin upon himself. This was beautiful in David; we may say that it was natural; it was right. It was far, immeasurably, inferior to the Lord Jesus. There there was no sin, and yet He took all the sin upon Himself – suffered for sins “just for unjust, that He might bring us to God.” But here it was the king that had been unjust, that had brought this scourge upon the people. Nevertheless, new at least, he is used by the grace of God. Now he presents himself for the blow, but sovereign grace must reign. “Then the angel of Jehovah commanded Gad to say to David, that David should go up, and set up an altar unto Jehovah in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.” The place where mercy rejoiced against judgment becomes the locality of the altar. This shows where the temple was afterward to be built – where the plague was stayed by divine mercy. “David went up at the saying of Gad.”
We find an interesting scene between David and Ornan who was willing that all should be given; but no; it must be David’s gift, not a Jebusite’s. “And king David said to Ornan, Nay; but I will verily buy it for the full price: for I will not take that which is thine for Jehovah, nor offer burnt offerings without cost. So David gave to Ornan for the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight. And David built there an altar unto Jehovah, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.” How striking! The man that had brought all the trouble – the guilty king, but the type of the Holy One of Israel – the type of Him that gave up His life a ransom for many.
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
Satan. See note on 2Sa 24:1.
trespass = guilt. See Exo 30:11-16. The Tabernacle was erected with the ransom paid for 600,000. The site of the Temple obtained at the cost of 70,000 souls.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 21
In chapter twenty-one.
And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel. And David said to Joab and to the rulers of the people, Go, and number Israel from Beersheba even to Dan; and bring the number of them to me, that I may know it ( 1Ch 21:1-2 ).
Now this was a sin on David’s part, and no doubt a sin of pride. David had, as I said, this is a record of the final conquest of David in chapter twenty. David had been very victorious over their enemies. They had subdued their enemies, and I wanted to point out the one thing. It would appear that David cut them up with axes and swords or plows and so forth. Actually the Hebrew text is that David put them to work with these things. He actually more or less made slaves out of the people, rather than cutting them up with saws and axes and all.
This is a sin of pride. David’s desire to number Israel in order that he might know how great an army of people he had behind him. And it was only those who were able to go to war that were really numbered. It was sort of a military registration or census that was taken. Men that were capable of going out to battle. And was sort of a failure on David’s part, definitely a sin. David later confesses the sin before the Lord, that of pride. I have an army of so many and so forth. And that of boasting in the military strength.
Now David later, or earlier had written psalms concerning that we were not to trust in horses or trust in the armies, but to trust in the living God. And David knew this. That the strength did not lie in the number of military personnel in the nation. But his real strength lay in the Lord and in the power of the Lord and in his trusting in the Lord. And yet David, human as he was, as we all are, decided that he would take a census of the military men.
Now Joab, his general, who was a rascal for the most part, Joab objected to David’s desire to take a census. “Don’t do this thing, David; it’s not good. Why should you bring the people into reproach and so forth by doing this thing?” But David overruled the objections of Joab and insisted that this census be taken of all of the men of Israel. And so they brought to David the number, and there were one million, a hundred thousand from the tribes of Israel; four hundred and seventy thousand from the tribe of Judah. But Joab did not count the tribes of Levi and Benjamin among them because he actually detested the order that David had given to number them.
And God was displeased with this thing; therefore he smote Israel. And David said unto God, I have sinned greatly, because I have done this thing: but now, I beseech thee, do away the iniquity of thy servant; for I have done very foolishly ( 1Ch 21:7-8 ).
So after having insisted overruling Joab, God was displeased. And David immediately confessed his sin unto God and his own folly. Now it is interesting that the Bible-and I’m glad that it does-relates to us the sins and the failure of the great men, as well as their successes. So often when we are telling stories about our accomplishments, we don’t like to include in our stories our failures. We like to sort of tell of our successes, and make it appear that everything we do is successful. But if we were perfect, then how discouraging it would be for those who are not perfect.
If David was a perfect man, if he never did anything wrong, then we would all of us be prone to say, “Yes, but David was perfect. I can see why God would use David. I could see why God blessed David, because he was such a perfect man. But God can’t bless me and God can’t use me, because I’m so imperfect.” So God is very careful to record for us the mistakes and the sins of these men that He used in such a mighty way in order that we would not be excusing ourselves and saying, “Well, God can’t use me.” For God can use you and wants to use you in spite of the fact that you have failed, and in spite of the fact that you’re far from perfect.
Abraham, the man of faith, had great lapses of faith. There were times when he sought to take things into his own hand. Deceiving the kings concerning Sarah, his relationship. “She’s my sister.” He didn’t trust in the Lord to be able to preserve him from Abimelech or from the Pharaoh. Taking things into his own hands as far as an heir because he didn’t trust God to give him a son through Sarah. The man of faith.
Elijah, the great prophet of God, the man of faith, hiding in a cave clear down in the Sinai, mount Horeb because Jezebel had threatened his life. Here is the guy that had upset all the prophets of Baal, took them down to the river and wiped them out, and now he’s running because some woman is threatening to get him.
And so the Bible records these for us so that you’ll know that though Elijah was a man of great dynamic power, great faith, a prophet of God, yet he had these times where he ran and failed and was fearful and the whole thing. In order that, as James said, Elijah was a man of like passions, even like you and me. And yet, he prayed and it rained not for the space of three years. Now he wasn’t some super saint. He wasn’t some Clark Kent. He was a plain ordinary person just like you and me. And yet, God was able to use him because God uses plain, ordinary people. And God uses people who make mistakes, and God uses people who fail. And God uses people who sin. Because sin was not the chief characteristic of David’s life; righteousness was the chief characteristic of his life, though he did sin.
Now it is possible for us to love the Lord, to be living for the Lord, to serve the Lord, and still be guilty of sin. David was such a man. He loved the Lord. Now as soon as he realized God’s displeasure, and though he had been warned by Joab, “Don’t do this thing,” as soon as he, it was brought to his attention, this has displeased God, David repented. He confessed. And that’s what sets David apart. So many times when we are faced with our guilt, we try to justify it. We try to give the explanations. “Well, I did it because.” We’re so often like Adam. “Well, Lord, the woman that You gave me to be my wife, she did tempt me and I did eat.” And I’m trying to explain to God my reason for doing it, rather than just confess and say, “God, I sinned. I was wrong.”
Now God doesn’t want an explanation. God doesn’t want you to justify your position. All God wants you to do is confess it so He can forgive it. As soon as you confess, then God has the grounds for forgiveness. And that’s what He’s seeking, just a confession of guilt. And so David confessed his sin. He said, “Lord, I’ve done foolishly in doing this thing.” And David recognized and acknowledged his sin before God. That ugly, horrible sin of pride that all of us find so difficult to deal with in our own lives. The sin by which Satan fell. It was a Cromwell flee pride, for by this sin the angels fell. Flee ambition. The idea of pride.
Thus, David was called the man after God’s own heart, because he was a man, when he realized his guilt, was willing to confess and seek the forgiveness of his sin.
So the LORD spoke to Gad, the prophet, and said to him, Go to David, and tell him that he has three choices: either [three months of famine in the land; or] three years rather of famine in the land; or three months to be destroyed before your enemies, while the sword of your enemies overtake you; or three days of the sword of the LORD, even the pestilence, in the land, and the angel of the LORD destroying throughout all the coasts of Israel. Now the prophet said to David, Advise me what I’m to tell the Lord who sent me to you. And so David said, I choose to throw myself on the mercy of God. I’ll take the three days of God’s pestilence in the land because I know He’s merciful ( 1Ch 21:9-10 , 1Ch 21:12-13 ).
My enemies, no way. I know that they’re not merciful. If I’m delivered into their hands for three months, that will be it. So I’ll take the three days for I know that God is merciful.
And so the angel of the LORD went throughout the land of Israel [beginning to slay the men]: and seventy thousand of them fell by the pestilence [in the three days]. And the angel of the LORD came to Jerusalem to destroy it: and David saw the angel of the LORD with the drawn sword ( 1Ch 21:14-16 ).
Now this must have been really something for David. He saw up there in the sky the angel of the Lord with a drawn sword. It must have been a very frightening experience, to say the least.
And David lifted up his voice, and he cried unto the LORD, the angel of the LORD who was standing there between the heaven and the earth, having the sword that was drawn stretched out over Jerusalem ( 1Ch 21:16 ).
And David said, “Hey, I’m the one that sinned, not these innocent people. Don’t destroy them.” And so we find that,
David said unto God [verse seventeen, declared], Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered? even I it is that have sinned and done this evil indeed; but for these sheep, what have they done? let your hand, I pray thee, O LORD my God, be upon me, and my father’s house; but not on thy people, that they should be plagued ( 1Ch 21:17 ).
Now I think that probably one of the hardest things concerning sin is to see the effect that sin has on innocent people. My sins. To see the hurt that it brings to innocent people is always very hard. And no man lives unto himself. I’ve had a lot of people say, “Well, I may be doing wrong, but I’m only hurting myself.” That’s not true. No man lives to himself. Others are always affected by what you do, and sometimes in a very great way. And David was seeing the consequence of his sin, the damage that it was doing to these sheep. And he said, “Lord, bring it on me. Let me suffer for my own sins, not these innocent ones.” But unfortunately, there are always those innocent sufferers for our wrongdoings; as well as, of course, our own suffering many times.
So then the angel of the LORD commanded Gad to say to David, that David should go up, and set up an altar unto the LORD there in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite ( 1Ch 21:18 ).
Because David saw the angel standing above the area there of mount Moriah where a Jebusite had a threshingfloor in a field. And so the Lord commanded that David should build an altar there and offer a sacrifice unto the Lord. So David came to Ornan the Jebusite and he said, “I want to buy this threshingfloor, this field in order that I might offer to the Lord a sacrifice in this place.” And Ornan said, “Hey, you can have it. And take my cattle and use them for the sacrifices, and use the plow for the wood and so forth. And go ahead, you can have it.” And David said, “No, I will not give unto the Lord that which cost me nothing. Because it isn’t a true sacrifice if it doesn’t cost me something.”
God really doesn’t want our castoffs. How many times people give to the Lord that which cost them nothing. But as we said this morning, the measurement by which God measures our gifts to Him are never in the monetary value of the gift, but in the cost of the gift. What did it cost you to give to God? Because you see, you may give God a million dollars, but it would be totally meaningless if you, say, have two million in your bank account, because you can get by very well on one million dollars. Whereas someone else, if they give God a dollar, that could mean, you know, their bread for this week that they are going to have to go without food this week; a certain part of their food because they gave that dollar to God. Thus, because the dollar really cost them, in God’s measurement, the gift of a dollar is greater than the gift of a million dollars. Because the amount is irrelevant as far as God is concerned, because He really doesn’t need our money. But it’s the cost. The cost of the gift demonstrates the real value, because it demonstrates the depth of my love and my consecration unto God.
So David bought this field. Now it says, for six hundred shekels.
And David gave to Ornan for the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight ( 1Ch 21:25 ).
Now again, the Bible critics have found another error in the Bible. Because in Samuel where this same incident is recorded, in Second Samuel, chapter twenty-four, it says that David gave him fifty shekels of gold. And now here it says six hundred shekels of gold. And thus, the Bible contradicts itself and thus, the Bible could not be the Word of God if it contradicts itself. And thus, there is no reason to believe the Bible and so forth. And this is one of the supposed contradictions that those who are looking for problems in the Bible always find.
But as I said, these contradictions usually have a very simple explanation, and the study of the Hebrew text will help you in the explanation of this particular problem. Because in the Hebrew, we are told the Hebrew word used where he bought the threshingfloor is one word in Hebrew. Here the word is maqowm, which means the whole area around; he bought the whole field. Now he paid fifty shekels of gold for the threshingfloor, and then he gave him six hundred shekels for the whole field that was around the place. Because he bought the whole thing because he decided that he was going to build a temple for God here. So there’s really no contradiction at all. He made two separate purchases. One of the threshingfloor, and then one of the place. And the word place being the Hebrew word maqowm; he bought the whole place for six hundred shekels of gold, and fifty shekels of gold for the threshingfloor. Another contradiction dissolves and the Bible still stands.
Aren’t you glad? “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
1Ch 21:1. And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.
Israel had greatly offended and grieved God, and it was to be punished. God punished one sin by another: the sin of David works for the chastisement of a sinful people.
1Ch 21:2. And David said to Joab and to the rulers of the people, Go, number Israel from Beersheba even to Dan; and bring the number of them to me, that I may know it.
He had got proud, he had begun to depend upon the number of his people. In truth, it was a large population under his sway, five millions or more, and he, that had been a shepherd lad, that in his early youth had trusted in his God, now thinking himself a great man, somewhat in the spirit of Nebuchadnezzar, begins to say, Behold, this great kingdom that I have gathered and founded.
1Ch 21:3. And Joab answered, The LORD make his people an hundred times so many more as they be: but, my lord, the king, are they not all my lords servants? why then doth my lord require this thing? why will he be a cause of trespass to Israel?
It adds greatly to a wrong action if we are checked in it, and especially if we are checked in it by a man who has not any conscience to spare, but yet, notwithstanding his roughness, such as Joab had, nevertheless expostulates with you, why do this? The people generally understood that, when they were numbered, it was with a view to taxing them, it was with a view of showing Davids sovereignty over them. Now David was not their sovereign, the Lord God was their King; David was but the Viceroy, and when he began to count them as though they were his own, it was a source of great indignation to the most High. I am afraid when you and I begin to count up as we have done, begin to reckon upon how much we have given, or how much we have effected for God, we begin to appropriate a measure of glory to ourselves. We had better leave that alone, for although pride may not seem a great sin in the eye of men, it is assuredly that which bringeth the utmost wrath from the most High. He cannot endure pride, especially in those whom He has lifted up. He took David from the sheepfold, and if David has now become great, David must be brought down again.
1Ch 21:4-6. Nevertheless the kings word prevailed against Joab. Wherefore Joab departed, and went throughout all Israel, and came to Jerusalem. And Joab gave the sum of the number of the people unto David. And all they of Israel were a thousand thousand and an hundred thousand men that drew sword; and Judah was four hundred threescore and ten thousand men that drew sword. But Levi and Benjamin counted he not among them: for the kings word was abominable to Joab.
So he did no more of it than he could possibly help.
1Ch 21:7-8. And God was displeased with this thing; therefore he smote Israel. And David said unto God, I have sinned greatly, because I have done this thing: but now I beseech thee, do away the iniquity of thy servant; for I have done very foolishly.
We read that Davids heart smote him. Although he had gone wrong, he was nevertheless a good man, and when an ambitious man sins it is a great sin, but it is not long that he continues in it: his conscience is awakened; the Spirit of God is in him. Davids heart smote him. That is a terrible blow when your own heart smites you; if you never feel any other person smiting you, you will feel that.
Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible
1Ch 21:1-8
1Ch 21:1-8
DAVID’S NUMBERING THE PEOPLE;
THE PESTILENCE;
PURCHASE OF THE SITE FOR THE TEMPLE;
DAVID’S SIN IN NUMBERING THE PEOPLE
“And Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel. And David said to Joab and to the princes of the people, Go, number Israel from Beersheba even to Dan; and bring me word that I may know the sum of them. And Joab said, Jehovah make his people a hundred times as many as they are: but, my lord the king, are they not all my lord’s servants? why doth my lord require this thing? why will he be a cause of guilt unto Israel? Nevertheless the king’s word prevailed against Joab. Wherefore Joab departed, and went throughout all Israel, and came to Jerusalem. And Joab gave up the sum of the numbering of the people unto David. And all they of Israel were a thousand thousand and a hundred thousand that drew sword: and Judah was four hundred threescore and ten thousand men that drew sword. But Levi and Benjamin he counted not among them; for the king’s word was abominable to Joab. And God was displeased with this thing; therefore he smote Israel. And David said unto God, I have sinned greatly, in that I have done this thing: but now put away, I beseech thee, the iniquity of thy servant; for I have done very foolishly.”
E.M. Zerr:
1Ch 21:1-2. This verse should be read as an explanation of 2Sa 24:1, where it sounds as if the Lord induced David to number Israel. It is an established rule of literature that where two different accounts are given of the same event, the easier one should be used to explain the other. We know that God would not cause a man to do a certain thing, then punish him for doing so. Therefore, the whole story is that God was angry with David because he allowed Satan to mislead him.
1Ch 21:3. The speech of Joab indicates the motive of David in ordering this enumeration of the people. He was especially interested in numerical strength, which would rather be a questioning of the power of God, which can operate independently of the great numbers of man. When a man decides to do a thing with the wrong motive, even if that thing would be right in itself, he is liable to neglect, some duty connected with it. David was guilty of such neglect as we shall see. Joab was a wise man and saw through the purposes of his king, and tried to get him to change his mind.
1Ch 21:4. We again see the loyalty of Joab. Although he felt sure a mistake was about to be made, he prepared to carry out the word of his chief.
1Ch 21:5-6. There is a difference of numbers between the two accounts of this transaction. I have explained it at the other place in 2Sa 24:9.
1Ch 21:7. Smote Israel. This was according to the threat God made in connection with this subject. (Exo 30:12.)
1Ch 21:8. The penitence of David again showed itself and the reason he was said to be a man after God’s own heart. (1Sa 13:14.) It was not because he never made any mistakes, for all men do that, but because he always was fair and honest about it afterward. He did not try to justify himself in his wrong but confessed that he had “sinned greatly.”
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
The cause of David’s action in numbering Israel is distinctly stated to be Satan. Therein lies a revelation of its nature. The one sin of Satan is that of pride and ambition, and this was the sin of David. His victories had resulted in the lifting up of his spirit, and in arrogance he would know the number of the people that he might make his boast therein. In this he persisted, notwithstanding the protest of Joab.
The chief interest of this chapter for us lies in the revelation of the true character of David. His sins were the lapses and accidents of his life. This is not to condone them. It is, however, to emphasize that the habitual set of his life was far otherwise than these sins suggest, and the deepest truth concerning him is revealed, not by the failures, but by his action afterwards. He confessed his sin frankly; chose to fall into the hands of God rather than any other for punishment; mourned over the death of the people because of his conviction that the sin was his, and refused to offer on the altar anything that had cost him nothing.
These things reveal, in order, his sense of sin and knowledge of himself, his knowledge of God and confidence in God’s tender mercies, his love of his people, and his profound sense of what was due to God in worship. He sinned surely, but, after all, he was a man after God’s own heart, and this is never more clearly manifest than in these dark days when God dealt with him for his wrongdoing. By comparison with the men of his own time, and the other kings of the nation, he stands pre-eminent in real godliness.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
1Ch 21:13
I. The sin of David in numbering the people was self-confidence; pride in his own strength, and forgetfulness of the source of all his strength, even of God. It was the greater sin in him because he had had such marvellous, such visible, witnesses of God’s love, and care, and guidance. Past experience might and should have taught him that his strength was not in himself, but in his God.
II. The sins of pride, and self-confidence, and forgetfulness of God are only too common amongst ourselves. When men dwell securely, in full peace and health, they grow careless in religion. God is not much present with them; they seem sufficient of themselves to keep themselves and to make themselves happy. Let us judge ourselves, that we be not judged by the Lord. Let us fear more the Lord our God, and serve Him in truth with all our heart, for consider how great things He hath done for us.
R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons, 3rd series, p. 150.
It is better to fall into the hand of God than into the hands of men, because in His whole treatment of human sin God is constantly seeking, not the destruction, but the salvation, of the sinner. God has never answered our sin merely by punishment. Instead of confining Himself to penalty, He sets up the Cross and shows men the sinfulness of sin through the depth and tenderness of His own mercy.
God’s government is not a mere magistracy. It is a moral dominion-a government of the heart.
What is wanted for a full acceptation of the principle of this text? (1) A deep sense of sin. David had it: “I have sinned greatly in that I have done; and now, I beseech Thee, O Lord, take away the iniquity of Thy servant, for I have done very foolishly.” (2) An unreserved committal of our case to God. David gave himself up entirely to God’s will. We must fall into the hand of God, an expression which signifies resignation, perfect trust in the Divine righteousness and benevolence, and an entire committal of our whole case to the disposal of God.
Parker, City Temple, 1870, p. 325.
References: 1Ch 21:13.-Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 47. 1Ch 21:28.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx., No. 1808. 1Ch 22:1.-Ibid.
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
10. The Numbering of the People and the Punishment
CHAPTER 21
1. Davids failure in numbering the people (1Ch 21:1-7)
2. Davids confession and the message of God (1Ch 21:8-12)
3. Davids answer and the punishment (1Ch 21:13-17)
4. The altar in the threshing floor of Ornan (1Ch 21:18-30)
On the alleged discrepancy between the statement in 2Sa 24:1 And again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and He moved (literal: He suffered him to be moved) David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah, and 1Ch 21:1 And Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to number Israel; see annotations on 2 Sam. 24. Israel had committed some sin and deserved punishment. This is clear from the statement in 2Sa 24:1. The direct cause of the visitation, however, was Davids pride, and may have been connected with the desire of constituting his kingdom as a great military power. He wanted to know the strength of the nation and glory in it, and the king forgot that the Lord had increased Israel and all he was and had was of God. What a difference between David here and David sitting in the presence of the Lord after hearing Nathans message! (17:16). Nothing humbles so as being in the presence of the Lord. The lust of the flesh in self-indulgence had led to his awful sin with Bathsheba, and now the lust of the eyes and the pride of life had entangled him. Satan stood behind it all and the sin committed, pride and self-exaltation, was according to Satans character. Then David confessed (verse 8) and the Lord sent the prophet Gad to him announcing the modes of punishment from which he was to make his choice. The recovery of David, his real knowledge of God and the working of His grace in his heart are manifested by the fact that he committed himself to God, choosing rather to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of his enemies. The Lord sent the pestilence. David saw the angel of the Lord. Then David and the elders clothed in sack cloth were on their faces. At the sight of the angel with his drawn sword stretched over Jerusalem, David confessed again, but his prayer becomes an intercession; he takes the sin upon himself and prays let Thine hand, be on me, and on my fathers house; but not on Thy people that they should be plagued. This prayer was speedily followed by mercy. The site of the future house of the Lord was then acquired. (See comment on 2 Sam. 24.) Ornan and his four sons had also seen the angel and they were afraid (verse 20). And the Jebusite was willing to give the threshing-floor and all within it. And when the site had been acquired by purchase and the altar was built, burnt-offerings and peace-offerings were brought. Heaven answered by fire. And the LORD commanded the angel; and he put up his sword again into the sheath thereof. All is blessedly typical of Him who is the true burnt-offering, as well as the peace-offering.
It is interesting to see the order unfolded here in the establishment of the sovereign grace: first of all, the heart of God and His sovereign grace in election, suspending the execution of the deserved and pronounced judgment (verse 15); next, the revelation of this judgment, a revelation which produces humiliation before God and a full confession of sin before His face. David, and the elders of Israel, clothed in sackcloth, fall upon their faces, and David presents himself as the guilty one. Then, instruction comes from God, as to that which must be done to cause the pestilence judicially and definitively to cease, namely, the sacrifice in Ornans threshing-floor. God accepts the sacrifice, sending fire to consume it, and then He commands the angel to sheathe his sword. And sovereign grace, thus carried out in righteousness through sacrifice, becomes the means of Israels approach to their God, and establishes the place of their access to Him.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
am 2987, bc 1017, An, Ex, Is, 474
Satan: 2Sa 24:1, 1Ki 22:20-22, Job 1:6-12, Job 2:1, Job 2:4-6, Zec 3:1, Mat 4:3, Luk 22:31, Joh 13:2, Act 5:3, Jam 1:13, Rev 12:10
provoked David: Luk 11:53, Heb 10:24
Reciprocal: Num 1:2 – Take ye the sum Num 26:4 – General Jos 22:18 – he will be 1Sa 26:19 – stirred 1Ch 7:2 – whose number 1Ch 7:7 – were reckoned 1Ch 7:40 – the number 1Ch 27:24 – began to number 2Ch 32:25 – General Mat 4:10 – Satan Mat 16:23 – Satan Joh 8:44 – He was 2Co 2:11 – General Rev 12:9 – and Satan
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
1Ch 21:1. Satan stood up against Israel Before the Lord and his tribunal, to accuse David and Israel, and to ask Gods permission to tempt David. Standing is the accusers posture before mens tribunals; and consequently the Holy Scriptures (which use to speak of the things of God after the manner of men, to bring them down to our capacities) elsewhere represent Satan in this posture. See 1Ki 22:21; Zec 3:1. In 2Sa 24:1, it is said, The anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David, or rather, there was who moved David; namely, Satan, as is here stated, by Gods permission. The righteous judgments of God are to be observed and acknowledged even in the sins and unrighteousness of men. But we are sure God is not the author of sin, and that, strictly speaking, he tempts no man, Jas 1:13. That passage, therefore, must be explained by this. But of this particular, and of the contents of this whole chapter, and of the variations and seeming contradictions between this narrative and that in Samuel, see notes there.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1Ch 21:1. Satan stood up against Israel; that is, the accuser, or calumniator.
1Ch 21:3. Why will my lord the kingbe a cause of trespass to Israel? Joab was struck with the sin, and in a way we can scarcely account for. Satan, who knew the elated state of Israel, and who knows how to catch men by their passions, availed himself of the popular humour of the king and the people, to draw them to a boasting and wanton pride.
1Ch 21:5. Joab gave thenumber, in a round sum. See 2Sa 24:9. Dr. Lightfoot accounts for the variation of the account, by the number of the allies being included in the one census, and not in the other.
1Ch 21:11-12. Choose thee, either three years famine, &c. Here is a sad choice of three sore temporal punishments for a temporal sin. Famine would diminish their boasted numbers by death and by exile; the sword would do the same; the pestilence would also do it. David wisely chose the plague, which happily operated in bringing him and the people to sit in the dust, after their soaring pride in meditated grasps at empire and dominion. Joab did not count Levi, being poor; nor Benjamin, not yet recovered from their almost total excision by the civil war.
1Ch 21:25. Six hundred shekels of gold. In 2Sa 24:24, it is fifty shekels of silver. As the shekels were of different weight and value, it is thought that David gave fifty shekels of gold for the threshingfloor, which would make about six hundred shekels of silver. Hence one word might easily be miswritten for another.Davids fall and family calamities are here omitted.
1Ch 21:26. The Lord answeredby fire upon the altar. This was the highest mark of divine approbation; it was also accompanied by a revelation that the Lord had chosen that hill for the scite of his throne and sanctuary; and by consequence, that all the high places where the patriarchs had offered burnt-offerings, should for ever cease. See on Genesis 15 :2 Kings 18. The Persians and the Hindoos err in worshipping fire as a god, for he has veiled his presence in clouds, and in angelic figures, as well as in flames of fire; and he still accepts the offering of the heart by the holy fire of love. Luk 24:32. Rom 5:5.
REFLECTIONS.
But in addition to the former remarks on this important chapter, we may observe that Moses formed in the spirit a perfect idea of the character of his nation. Jeshurun, says he, waxed fat and kicked. The remark was highly predictive. This whole nation was intoxicated with the victories of their king, and with the vast accession of wealth, of territory, and of proselytes. Hence they boasted of their population, and gloried in their strength. Hence the anger of the Lord, it is said in Samuel, was kindled against Israel, and he permitted Satan to tempt them to sin, that their boasted numbers might be diminished by affliction. How mysterious is the hand of God, that he should often make those very accomplishments, in which the wicked peculiarly glory, the cause of their humiliation and shame.
To number the people for vain parade, that they might trust in the multitude rather than in the Lord, was revolting even to Joab. The task was insupportable; for he left Benjamin and Levi unpolled, and returned the gross number. And it is not improbable but Benjamin, who inhabited part of Jerusalem, was spared in the plague on that account. It is very mortifying when the leading persons in Christs church so act as to excite remonstrances from carnal and wicked men.
When a nation or a city weep and pray for the remission of sins, when they fast and humble their souls, they may expect the stern aspect of justice to soften into compassion. JEHOVAH, the angel, finding the city in sackcloth, dropped his avenging sword; but shunning the voluptuous houses of princes, he abode at the threshingfloor, and discovered himself to Araunah and his sons; for the well disposed heathen found more grace in the eyes of heaven than an Israelite elated with prosperity.
We have next, the deep humiliation and repentance of David, for his vain glory in numbering the people. He was not the only sinner; the nation at large were intoxicated with their conquests, and their wealth; yet he takes to himself the whole of the sin and of the punishment; and it was solely on account of his repentance that his life, and the lives of his people were saved from the plague. We here learn the character of true repentance. We must not justify ourselves, we must not diminish the atrocious circumstances of our sins, but lay down our neck to the stroke, and submit both body and soul to the gracious pleasure of Almighty God. He knows best how to act towards a guilty people. The placability, and compassion of God are very encouraging motives to repentance. He came to destroy Jerusalem; for that city was, no doubt, the foremost to glory and trust in an arm of flesh. But finding them in tears from the idea of the plague, and by the sermons of Gad, the Lord not only forbore the stroke, but chose his residence among them. He approached the industrious Jebusite and his four sons: for now, it would seem, they were proselytes to the Jewish religion, and required an atoning altar to be constructed there. Yea, he chose this most convenient spot for the scite of his temple, and honoured the sacrifice by accepting it with fire from heaven. Let no man therefore account his repentance complete, till God reveals a peace to his conscience which passeth all understanding, and a hallowing flame of love to his heart which passeth knowledge.
There is one circumstance more which seems to claim attention. Zion the fort, and Salem the city, were the metropolis of the Jebusites in the days of Abraham. Genesis 14. So it had continued till David took it by storm; but this humane conqueror had not dispossessed Araunah of his land, nor the poor of their dwellings; for true valour is characterized by humanity. This land David now purchased. Surely, if we may pay any regard to the many typical things not marked as such in the new testament, we have here a figure, that God would lay among the gentiles the great foundation of the christian church. Such was his wisdom, and such his sovereignty, to choose the place where the glories of his name should be recorded. May our souls, in like manner, so long the seat of vanity, become a habitation of God through the Spirit.
How happy were the Hebrews in having the oracle and holy prophets nigh at hand. The primitive christians long enjoyed this privilege. Why is it now almost lost. Oh, when will the Lord restore it to us again, as he has promised in the sacred scriptures.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1Ch 21:1 to 1Ch 22:1The Numbering of the Hosts; the Punishment (see notes on 2Sa 24:1-25).There are many variations from the corresponding passage in 2 S., and it is uncertain whether the Chronicler used any other source or not.
1Ch 21:1. And Satan stood up: in 2Sa 24:1 the temptation comes from Yahweh; the Chronicler altered this as unfitting in view of the developed doctrine of God which had supervened. In the earlier literature the term Satan means adversary (Num 22:22; Num 22:32); its use here as a proper name is a development due to the influence of Persian demonology on Jewish belief; cf. Job 1:6*, Job 2:2, Zec 3:1 f.
1Ch 21:6. Probably added because, according to Num 1:49, the Levites might not be numbered for military purposes; he mentions Benjamin as not being counted because of Jerusalem, the Holy City, lying on his borders.
1Ch 21:9. God: cf. 1Ch 29:29, 2Ch 29:25.
1Ch 21:15. the threshing-floor of Ornan: this was on the top of Mount Zion where the Temple was built (cf. 1Ch 22:1). In 2Sa 24:16 and elsewhere Ornan occurs in the form Araunah.
1Ch 21:16. Not in 2 Samuel 24.between the heaven and the earth: the Hebrew way of expressing in mid-air. The description of the angel is a development due to the influence of Persian angelology; the earlier Hebrew conception pictured angels as men.
1Ch 21:18. The reference to the angel here and in 1Ch 21:20 is added by the Chronicler for the purpose of enhancing the supernaturalness of the episode; in 2Sa 24:18 ff. there is no mention of the angel.
1Ch 21:23. wheat for the meal-offering: a characteristic addition by the Chronicler (cf. Lev 2:1 ff.).
1Ch 21:25. six hundred shekels of gold: this, too, is characteristic of the Chronicler, who desires to emphasize the value of everything connected with the Temple, even down to its very site. In 2Sa 24:24 the price is fifty shekels of silver, including the oxen.
1Ch 21:26. from heaven by fire: another addition by the Chronicler (cf. Lev 9:24).
1Ch 21:28 to 1Ch 22:1. 1Ch 21:29 f. forms a parenthesis; 1Ch 21:28; 1Ch 22:1 describe the definite choice of Omans threshing-floor as the site of the Temple.
1Ch 21:29. the high place at Gibeon: cf. 1Ch 16:39.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
21:1 And {a} Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.
(a) He tempted David, in setting before his eyes his excellency and glory, his power and victories, see 2Sa 24:1.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
God’s provision of a place for Israel ch. 21
Chapter 21 records the fulfillment of God’s second personal promise to David, namely, that He would appoint a place where Israel could dwell securely (in rest, 1Ch 17:9). This was a promise of peace for Israel, but as the verses following 1Ch 17:9 make clear, God had more than this in mind. He intended to dwell among His people in the house Solomon would build (1Ch 17:11-12). God’s presence was the real source of Israel’s security. By giving Israel a place, God would provide for Himself a place where He would dwell, specifically the temple. Chapter 21 records God’s choice of the place where He would dwell, the site of the temple. There David’s successor would build a house for Yahweh (1Ch 17:12).
"It may also be said that having empowered Israel to defeat their human foes, God provided a place of atonement and divine manifestation whereby they could defeat (or hold at bay) their nonhuman enemy, Satan." [Note: Thompson, p. 160.]
The writer gave much attention to detail and background events because of the importance of the temple site. All these events point to God’s ultimate purpose for the temple: that it would draw the Israelites and the Gentiles to Himself.
"Here, by divine command, is to be the site of the temple. It is a gift not from Ornan but from God. The grace of God, in giving this to His people as the place where ark and altar are to be brought together, is a thing to be wondered at." [Note: Wilcock, p. 95.]
Apparently David’s lack of faith in God’s ability to save His people led him to number the people (1Ch 21:1-7). God did not approve of this attitude, and even though David confessed his sin and God removed his guilt, the consequences of his sin followed (1Ch 21:8-12). David’s words to Gad again model a proper response to God (1Ch 21:13). By referring to Gad as a "seer," the writer implied that Gad served David primarily by getting divine revelation for him (cf, 1Sa 22:5; 2Sa 24:11-19). In contrast, the "prophet" Nathan’s primary role appears to have been announcing messages from the Lord to the king (cf. 2Sa 7:2-17; 1Ch 17:1-15). [Note: See Leon J. Wood, The Prophets of Israel, pp. 169-257, for discussion of each of the prophets mentioned during Israel’s monarchy.] God’s compassion is also evident in His relenting and reducing His originally intended judgment (1Ch 21:15; cf. Exo 32:14; et al.). David volunteered to bear God’s judgment in place of the innocent Israelites (1Ch 21:16-17). However, God instructed him to build an altar at the place of God’s judgment and to offer the sacrifice that the Mosaic Law required. That was the site God chose for His house (1Ch 21:18 to 1Ch 22:1). That place forever after, as long as Israel occupied the land, would be where the priests would atone for the Israelites’ sins by sacrifice. God demonstrated His approval of David’s offerings by sending fire from heaven (1Ch 21:26; cf. Lev 9:24; 1Ki 18:38). The primary reason for including this incident involving David’s sin was that it explains the site chosen for the temple. [Note: Thompson, p. 160.]
The Hebrew word transliterated "Satan" (satan; 1Ch 21:1) means adversary. Adversary would be a better translation here. This is the first time in Scripture the word appears without the definite article as a proper noun. It seems that the adversary God permitted to worry David into numbering the people was a foreign enemy (1Ch 21:12; cf. 1Sa 29:4; 2Sa 19:23; 2Sa 24:1-25; 1Ki 5:4; 1Ki 11:14; 1Ki 11:23; 1Ki 11:25). [Note: See Sarah Japhet, I & II Chronicles, pp. 374-75; Robert B. Chisholm Jr., "Does God Deceive?" Bibliotheca Sacra 155:617 (January-March 1998):22-23; and Sydney H. T. Page, "Satan: God’s Servant," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 50:3 (September 2007):449-65.] Of course Satan played a role in this temptation, but it was evidently fear of one of his neighbors that disturbed David’s mind. [Note: See John H. Sailhamer, "1 Chronicles 21:1-A Study in Inter-biblical Interpretation," Trinity Journal 10NS:1 (Spring 1989):42-43.]
"The major reason for taking a census in Israel was to lay the basis for levying taxes (Exo 30:12; Num 3:40-51) or registering men for military service (Num 26:1-4)." [Note: Thompson, p. 160. Cf. 21:4-7.]
"The version of the incident in the Book of 2 Samuel [1Ch 24:1] gives an underlying theological perspective, while the Chronicler simply describes what happened from a human perspective." [Note: The NET Bible note on 21:1.]
David’s response to Gad’s instructions indicated his true repentance. He left the decision about punishment entirely in God’s hands and did not seek to control it.
"Perhaps the one thing that impresses more than David’s sins in his life are his repentances (cf. 2Sa 12:13 ff., and, associated in its heading with the same incident, Psalms 51). We do well to let his willingness to come fully to terms with his deficiencies inform our own responses to our moral failures before God." [Note: McConville, p. 71.]
Chapters 17-21 give the writer’s first account of what God promised David in the Davidic Covenant. The things that God promised, He provided in David’s lifetime and shortly after that. They included victory in battle, expanded influence, and a glorious reputation. The record of this promise is in 1Ch 17:8, and the fulfillment is in chapters 18-20. The second promise was a secure, peaceful place for Israel that made necessary a place for Yahweh to dwell among His people in fellowship. The record of this promise is in 1Ch 17:9-12, and chapter 21 guarantees its fulfillment. These promises and their fulfillments would have given the original readers of Chronicles great confidence. They would have encouraged them that Yahweh would yet fulfill those promises in the Davidic Covenant that had not yet materialized but were still future for them. The record should have the same effect on us today.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
SATAN
“And again the anger of Jehovah was kindled against Israel, and He moved David against them saying, Go, number Israel and Judah.” 2Sa 24:1
“And Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel.”- 1Ch 21:1
“Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God for God cannot be tempted with evil, and He Himself tempteth no man: but each man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed.”- Jam 1:13-14
THE census of David is found both in the book of Samuel and in Chronicles, in very much the same form; but the chronicler has made a number of small but important alterations and additions. Taken together, these changes involve a new interpretation of the history, and bring out lessons that cannot so easily be deduced from the narrative in the book of Samuel. Hence it is necessary to give a separate exposition of the narrative in Chronicles.
As before, we will first review the alterations made by the chronicler and then expound the narrative in the form in which it left his hand, or rather in the form in which it stands in the Masoretic text. Any attempt to deal with the peculiarly complicated problem of the textual criticism of Chronicles would be out of place here. Probably there are no corruptions of the text that would appreciably affect the general exposition of this chapter.
At the very outset the chronicler substitutes Satan for Jehovah, and thus changes the whole significance of the narrative. This point is too important to be dealt with casually, and must be reserved for special consideration later on. In 1Ch 21:2 there is a slight change that marks the different points of the views of the Chronicler and the author of the narrative in the book of Samuel. The latter had written that Joab numbered the people from Dan to Beersheba, a merely conventional phrase indicating the extent of the census. It might possibly, however, have been taken to denote that the census began in the north and was concluded in the south. To the chronicler, whose interests all centered in Judah, such an arrangement seemed absurd; and he carefully guarded against any mistake by altering “Dan to Beersheba” into “Beersheba to Dan.” In 1Ch 21:3 the substance of Joabs words is not altered, but various slight touches are added to bring out more clearly and forcibly what is implied in the book of Samuel. Joab had spoken of the census as being the kings pleasure. It was scarcely appropriate to speak of David “taking pleasure in” a suggestion of Satan. In Chronicles Joabs words are less forcible. “Why doth my lord require this thing?” Again, in the book of Samuel Joab protests against the census without assigning any reason. The context, it is true, readily supplies one; but in Chronicles all is made clear by the addition, “Why will he” (David) “be a cause of guilt unto Israel?” Further on the chroniclers special interest in Judah again betrays itself. The book of Samuel described, with some detail, the progress of the enumerators through Eastern and Northern Palestine by way of Beersheba to Jerusalem. Chronicles having already made them start from Beersheba, omits these details.
In 1Ch 21:5 the numbers in Chronicles differ not only from those of the older narrative, but also from the chroniclers own statistics in chapter 27. In this last account the men of war are divided into twelve courses of twenty-four thousand each, making a total of two hundred and eighty-eight thousand; in the book of Samuel Israel numbers eight hundred thousand, and Judah five hundred thousand; but in our passage Israel is increased to eleven hundred thousand, and Judah is reduced to four hundred and seventy thousand. Possibly the statistics in chapter 27 are not intended to include all the fighting men, otherwise the figures cannot be harmonized. The discrepancy between our passage and the book of Samuel is perhaps partly explained by the following verse, which is an addition of the chronicler. In the book of Samuel the census is completed, but our additional verse states that Levi and Benjamin were not included in the census. The chronicler understood that the five hundred thousand assigned to Judah in the older narrative were the joint total of Judah and Benjamin; he accordingly reduced the total by thirty thousand, because, according to his view, Benjamin was omitted from the census. The increase in the number of the Israelites is unexpected. The chronicler does not usually overrate the northern tribes. Later on Jeroboam, eighteen years after the disruption, takes the field against Abijah with “eight hundred thousand chosen men,” a phrase that implies a still larger number of fighting men, if all had been mustered. Obviously the rebel king would not be expected to be able to bring into the field as large a force as the entire strength of Israel in the most flourishing days of David. The chroniclers figures in these two passages are consistent, but the comparison is not an adequate reason for the alteration in the present chapter. Textual corruption is always a possibility in the case of numbers, but on the whole this particular change does not admit of a satisfactory explanation.
In 1Ch 21:7 we have a very striking alteration. According to the book of Samuel, Davids repentance was entirely spontaneous: “Davids heart smote him after that he had numbered the people”; but here God smites Israel, and then Davids conscience awakes. In 1Ch 21:12 the chronicler makes a slight addition, apparently to gratify his literary taste. In the original narrative the third alternative offered to David had been described simply as “the pestilence,” but in Chronicles the words “the sword of Jehovah” are added in antithesis to “the sword of Thine enemies” in the previous verse.
1Ch 21:16, which describes Davids vision of the angel with the drawn sword, is an expansion of the simple statement of the book of Samuel that David saw the angel. In 1Ch 21:18 we are not merely told that Gad spake to David, but that he spake by the command of the angel of Jehovah. 1Ch 21:20, which tells us how Ornan saw the angel, is an addition of the chroniclers. All these changes lay stress upon the intervention of the angel, and illustrate the interest taken by Judaism in the ministry of angels. Zechariah, the prophet of the Restoration, received his messages by the dispensation of angels; and the title of the last canonical prophet, Malachi, probably means “the Angel.” The change from Araunah to Ornan is a mere question of spelling. Possibly Ornan is a somewhat Hebraized form of the older Jebusite name Araunah.
In 1Ch 21:22 the reference to “a full price” and other changes in the form of Davids Words are probably due to the influence of Gen 23:9. In 1Ch 21:23 the chroniclers familiarity with the ritual of sacrifice has led him to insert a reference to a meal offering, to accompany the burnt offering. Later on the chronicler omits the somewhat ambiguous words which seem to speak of Araunah as a king. He would naturally avoid anything like a recognition of the royal status of a Jebusite prince.
In 1Ch 21:25 David pays much more dearly for Ornans threshing-floor than in the book of Samuel. In the latter the price is fifty shekels of silver, in the former six hundred shekels of gold. Most ingenious attempts have been made to harmonize the two statements. It has been suggested that fifty shekels of silver means silver to the value of fifty shekels of gold and paid in gold, and that six hundred shekels of gold means the value of six hundred shekels of silver paid in gold. A more lucid but equally impossible explanation is that David paid fifty shekels forevery tribe, six hundred in all. The real reason for the change is that when the Temple became supremely important to the Jews the small price of fifty shekels for the site seemed derogatory to the dignity of the sanctuary; six hundred shekels of gold was a more appropriate sum. Abraham had paid four hundred shekels for a burying-place; and a site for the Temple, where Jehovah had chosen to put His name, must surely have cost more. The chronicler followed the tradition which had grown up under the influence of this feeling.
1Ch 21:27-30; 1Ch 22:1 are an addition. According to the Levitical law, David was falling into grievous sin in sacrificing anywhere except before the Mosaic altar of burnt offering. The chronicler therefore states the special circumstances that palliated this offence against the exclusive privileges of the one sanctuary of Jehovah. He also reminds us that this threshing-floor became the site of the altar of burnt offering for Solomons temple. Here he probably follows an ancient and historical tradition; the prominence given to the threshing-floor in the book of Samuel indicates the special sanctity of the site. The Temple is the only sanctuary whose site could be thus connected with the last days of David. When the book of Samuel was written, the facts were too familiar to need any explanation; every one knew that the Temple stood on the site of Araunahs threshing-floor. The chronicler, writing centuries later, felt it necessary to make an explicit statement on the subject.
Having thus attempted to understand how our narrative assumed its present form, we will now tell the chroniclers story of these incidents. The long reign of David was drawing to a close. Hitherto he had been blessed with uninterrupted prosperity and success. His armies had been victorious over all the enemies of Israel, the borders of the land of Jehovah had been extended, David himself was lodged with princely splendor, and the services of the Ark were conducted with imposing ritual by a numerous array of priests and Levites. King and people alike were at the zenith of their glory. In worldly prosperity and careful attention to religious observances David and his people were not surpassed by Job himself. Apparently their prosperity provoked the envious malice of an evil and mysterious being, who appears only here in Chronicles: Satan, the persecutor of Job. The trial to which he subjected the loyalty of David was more subtle and suggestive than his assault upon Job. He harassed Job as the wind dealt with the traveler in the fable, and Job only wrapped the cloak of his faith closer about him; Satan allowed David to remain in the full sunshine of prosperity, and seduced him into sin by fostering his pride in being the powerful and victorious prince of a mighty people. He suggested a census. Davids pride would be gratified by obtaining accurate information as to the myriads of his subjects. Such statistics would be useful for the civil organization of Israel; the king would learn where and how to recruit his army or to find an opportunity to impose additional taxation. The temptation appealed alike to the king, the soldier, and the statesman, and did not appeal in vain. David at once instructed Joab and the princes to proceed with the enumeration; Joab demurred and protested: the census would be a cause of guilt unto Israel. But not even the great influence of the commander-in-chief could turn the king from his purpose. His word prevailed against Joab, wherefore Joab departed, and went throughout all Israel, and came to Jerusalem. This brief general statement indicates a long and laborious task, simplified and facilitated in some measure by the primitive organization of society and by rough and ready methods adopted to secure the very moderate degree of accuracy with which an ancient Eastern sovereign would be contented. When Xerxes wished to ascertain the number of the vast army with which he set out to invade Greece, his officers packed ten thousand men into as small a space as possible and built a wall round them; then they turned them out, and packed the space again and again; and so in time they ascertained how many tens of thousands of men there were in the army. Joabs methods would be different, but perhaps not much more exact. He would probably learn from the “heads of fathers houses” the number of fighting men in each family. Where the hereditary chiefs of a district were indifferent, he might make some rough estimate of his own. We may be sure that both Joab and the local authorities would be careful to err on the safe side. The king was anxious to learn that he possessed a large number of subjects. Probably as the officers of Xerxes went on with their counting they omitted to pack the measured area as closely as they did at first; they might allow eight or nine thousand to pass for ten thousand. Similarly Davids servants would, to say the least, be anxious not to underestimate the number of his subjects. The work apparently went on smoothly; nothing is said that indicates any popular objection or resistance to the census; the process of enumeration was not interrupted by any token of Divine displeasure against the “cause of guilt unto Israel.” Nevertheless Joabs misgivings were not set at rest; he did what he could to limit the range of the census and to withdraw at least two of the tribes from the impending outbreak of Divine wrath. The tribe of Levi would be exempt from taxation and the obligation of military service; Joab could omit them without rendering his statistics less useful for military and financial purposes. In not including the Levites in the general census of Israel, Joab was following the precedent set by the numbering in the wilderness. Benjamin was probably omitted in order to protect the Holy City, the chronicler following that form of the ancient tradition which assigned Jerusalem to Benjamin. Later on, {1Ch 27:23-24} however, the chronicler seems to imply that these two tribes left to the last were not numbered because of the growing dissatisfaction of Joab with his task: “Joab the son of Zeruiah began to number, but finished not.” But these different reasons for the omission of Levi and Benjamin do not mutually exclude each other. Another limitation is also stated in the later reference: “David took not the number of them twenty years old and under, because Jehovah had said that He would increase Israel like to the stars of heaven.” This statement and explanation seems a little superfluous: the census was specially concerned with the fighting men, and in the book of Numbers only those over twenty are numbered. But we have seen elsewhere that the chronicler has no great confidence in the intelligence of his readers, and feels bound to state definitely matters that have only been implied and might be overlooked. Here, therefore, he calls our attention to the fact that the numbers previously given do not comprise the whole male population, but only the adults. At last the census, so far as it was carried out at all, was finished, and the results were presented to the king. They are meager and bald compared to the volumes of tables which form the report of a modern census. Only two divisions of the country are recognized: “Judah” and “Israel,” or the ten tribes. The total is given for each: eleven hundred thousand for Israel, four hundred and seventy thousand for Judah, in all fifteen hundred and seventy thousand. Whatever details may have been given to the king, he would be chiefly interested in the grand total. Its figures would be the most striking symbol of the extent of his authority and the glory of his kingdom.
Perhaps during the months occupied in taking the census David had forgotten the ineffectual protests of Joab, and was able to receive his report without any presentiment of coming evil. Even if his mind were not altogether at ease, all misgivings would for the time be forgotten, He probably made or had made for him some rough calculation as to the total of men, women, and children that would correspond to the vast array of fighting men. His servants would not reckon the entire population at less than nine or ten millions. His heart would be uplifted with pride as he contemplated the statement of the multitudes that were the subjects of his crown and prepared to fight at his bidding. The numbers are moderate compared with the vast populations and enormous armies of the great powers of modern Europe; they were far surpassed by the Roman Empire and the teeming populations of the valleys of the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Tigris; but during the Middle Ages it was not often possible to find in Western Europe so large a population under one government or so numerous an army under one banner. The resources of Cyrus may not have been greater when he started on his career of conquest; and when Xerxes gathered into one motley horde the warriors of half the known world, their total was only about double the number of Davids robust and warlike Israelites. There was no enterprise that was likely to present itself to his imagination that he might not have undertaken with a reasonable probability of success. He must have regretted that his days of warfare were past, and that the unwarlike Solomon, occupied with more peaceful tasks, would allow this magnificent instrument of possible conquests to rust unused.
But the king was not long left in undisturbed enjoyment of his greatness. In the very moment of his exaltation, some sense of the Divine displeasure fell upon him. Mankind has learnt by a long and sad experience to distrust its own happiness. The brightest hours have come to possess a suggestion of possible catastrophe, and classic story loved to tell of the unavailing efforts of fortunate princes to avoid their inevitable downfall. Polycrates and Croesus, however, had not tempted the Divine anger by ostentatious pride; Davids power and glory had made him neglectful of the reverent homage due to Jehovah, and he had sinned in spite of the express warnings of his most trusted minister.
When the revulsion of feeling came, it was complete. The king at once humbled himself under the mighty hand of God, and made full acknowledgment of his sin and folly: “I have sinned greatly in that I have done this thing: but now put away, I beseech Thee, the iniquity of Thy servant, for I have done very foolishly.”
The narrative continues as in the book of Samuel. Repentance could not avert punishment, and the punishment struck directly at Davids pride of power and glory. The great population was to be decimated either by famine, war, or pestilence. The king chose to suffer from the pestilence, “the sword of Jehovah”; “Let me fall now into the hand of Jehovah, for very great are His mercies: and let me not fall into the hand of man. So Jehovah sent a pestilence upon Israel, and there felt of Israel seventy thousand men.” Not three days since Joab handed in his report, and already a deduction of seventy thousand would have to be made from its total; and still, the pestilence was not checked, for “God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it.” If, as we have supposed, Joab had withheld Jerusalem from the census, his pious caution was now rewarded: “Jehovah repented Him of the evil, and said to the destroying angel, It is enough; now stay thine hand.” At the very last moment the crowning catastrophe was averted. In the Divine counsels Jerusalem was already delivered, but to human eyes its fate still trembled in the balance: “And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of Jehovah stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem.” So another great Israelite soldier lifted up his eyes beside Jericho and beheld the captain of the host of Jehovah standing over against him with his sword drawn in his hand. {Jos 5:13} Then the sword was drawn to smite the enemies of Israel, but now it was turned to smite Israel itself. David and his elders fell upon their faces as Joshua had done before them: “And David said unto God, Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered? even I it is that have sinned and done very wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Let Thine hand, I pray Thee, O Jehovah my God, be against me and against my fathers house, but not against Thy people, that they should be plagued.”
The awful presence returned no answer to the guilty king, but addressed itself to the prophet Gad, and commanded him to bid David go up and build an altar to Jehovah in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite. The command was a message of mercy. Jehovah permitted David to build Him an altar; He was prepared to accept an offering at his hands. The kings prayers were heard, and Jerusalem was saved from the pestilence. But still the angel stretched out his drawn sword over Jerusalem; he waited till the reconciliation of Jehovah with His people should have been duly ratified by solemn sacrifices. At the bidding of the prophet, David went up to the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite. Sorrow and reassurance, hope and fear, contended for the mastery. No sacrifice could call back to life the seventy thousand victims whom the pestilence had already destroyed, and yet the horror of its ravages was almost forgotten in relief at the deliverance of Jerusalem from the calamity that had all but overtaken it. Even now the uplifted sword might be only held back for a time; Satan might yet bring about some heedless and sinful act, and the respite might end not in pardon, but in the execution of Gods purpose of vengeance. Saul had been condemned because he sacrificed too soon; now perhaps delay would be fatal. Uzzah had been smitten because he touched the Ark; till the sacrifice was actually offered who could tell whether some thoughtless blunder would not again provoke the wrath of Jehovah? Under ordinary circumstances David would not have dared to sacrifice anywhere except upon the altar of burnt offering before the tabernacle at Gibeon; he would have used the ministry of priests and Levites. But ritual is helpless in great emergencies. The angel of Jehovah with the drawn sword seemed to bar the way to Gibeon, as once before he had barred Balaams progress when he came to curse Israel. In his supreme need David builds his own altar and offers his own sacrifices; he receives the Divine answer without the intervention this time of either priest or prophet. By Gods most merciful and mysterious grace, Davids guilt and punishment, his repentance and pardon, broke down all barriers between himself and God.
But, as he went up to the threshing-floor, he was still troubled and anxious. The burden was partly lifted from his heart, but he still craved full assurance of pardon. The menacing attitude of the destroying angel seemed to hold out little promise of mercy and forgiveness, and yet the command to sacrifice would be cruel mockery if Jehovah did not intend to be gracious to His people and His anointed.
At the threshing-floor Ornan and his four sons were threshing wheat, apparently unmoved by the prospect of the threatened pestilence. In Egypt the Israelites were protected from the plagues with which their oppressors were punished. Possibly now the situation was reversed, and the remnant of the Canaanites in Palestine were not afflicted by the pestilence that fell upon Israel. But Ornan turned back and saw the angel; he may not have known the grim mission with which the Lords messenger had been entrusted, but the aspect of the destroyer, his threatening attitude, and the lurid radiance of his unsheathed and outstretched sword must have seemed unmistakable tokens of coming calamity. Whatever might be threatened for the future, the actual appearance of this supernatural visitant was enough to unnerve the stoutest heart; and Ornans four sons hid themselves.
Before long, however, Ornans terrors were somewhat relieved by the approach of less formidable visitors. The king and his followers had ventured to show themselves openly, in spite of the destroying angel: and they had ventured with impunity. Ornan went forth and bowed himself to David with his face to the ground. In ancient days the father of the faithful, oppressed by the burden of his bereavement, went to the Hittites to purchase a burying-place for his wife. Now the last of the Patriarchs, mourning for the sufferings of his people, came by Divine command to the Jebusite to purchase the ground on which to offer sacrifices, that the plague might be stayed from the people. The form of bargaining was somewhat similar in both cases. We are told that bargains are concluded in much the same fashion today. Abraham had paid four hundred shekels of silver for the field of Ephron in Machpelah, “with the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field.” The price of Ornans threshing-floor was m proportion to the dignity and wealth of the royal purchaser and the sacred purpose for which it was designed. The fortunate Jebusite received no less than six hundred shekels of gold.
David built his altar, and offered up his sacrifices and prayers to Jehovah. Then, in answer to Davids prayers, as later in answer to Solomons, fire fell from heaven upon the altar of burnt offering, and all this while the sword of Jehovah flamed across the heavens above Jerusalem, and the destroying angel remained passive, but to all appearances unappeased. But as the fire of God fell from heaven, Jehovah gave yet another final and convincing token that He would no longer execute judgment against His people. In spite of all that had happened, to reassure them, the spectators must have been thrilled with alarm when they saw that the angel of Jehovah no longer remained stationary, and that his flaming sword was moving through the heavens. Their renewed terror was only for a moment: “the angel put up his sword again into the sheath thereof,” and the people breathed more freely when they saw the instrument of Jehovahs wrath vanish out of their sight.
The use of Machpelah as a patriarchal burying-place led to the establishment of a sanctuary at Hebron, which continued to be the seat of a debased and degenerate worship even after the coming of Christ. It is even now a Mohammedan holy place. But On the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite there was to arise a more worthy memorial of the mercy and judgment of Jehovah. Without the aid of priestly oracle or prophetic utterance, David was led by the Spirit of the Lord to discern the significance of the command to perform an irregular sacrifice in a hitherto unconsecrated place. When the sword of the destroying angel interposed between David and the Mosaic tabernacle and altar of Gibeon, the way was not merely barred against the king and his court on one exceptional occasion. The incidents of this crisis symbolized the cutting off forever of the worship of Israel from its ancient shrine and the transference of the Divinely appointed center of the worship of Jehovah to the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite, that is to say to Jerusalem, the city of David and the capital of Judah.
The lessons of this incident, so far as the chronicler has simply borrowed from his authority, belong to the exposition of the book of Samuel. The main features peculiar to Chronicles are the introduction of the evil angel Satan, together with the greater prominence given to the angel of Jehovah, and the express statement that the scene of Davids sacrifice became the site of Solomons altar of burnt offering.
The stress laid upon angelic agency is characteristic of later Jewish literature, and is especially marked in Zechariah and Daniel. It was no doubt partly due to the influence of the Persian religion, but it was also a development from the primitive faith of Israel, and the development was favored by the course of Jewish history. The Captivity and the Restoration, with the events that preceded and accompanied these revolutions, enlarged the Jewish experience of nature and man. The captives in Babylon and the fugitives in Egypt saw that the world was larger than they had imagined. In Josiahs reign the Scythians from the far North swept over Western Asia, and the Medes and Persians broke in upon Assyria and Chaldaea from the remote East. The prophets claimed Scythians, Medes, and Persians as the instruments of Jehovah. The Jewish appreciation of the majesty of Jehovah, the Maker and Ruler of the world, increased as they learnt more of the world He had made and ruled; but the invasion of a remote and unknown people impressed them with the idea of infinite dominion and unlimited resources, beyond all knowledge and experience. The course of Israelite history between David and Ezra involved as great a widening of mans ideas of the universe as the discovery of America or the establishment of Copernican astronomy. A Scythian invasion was scarcely less portentous to the Jews than the descent of an irresistible army from the planet Jupiter would be to the civilized nations of the nineteenth century. The Jew began to shrink from intimate and familiar fellowship with so mighty and mysterious a Deity. He felt the need of a mediator, some less exalted being, to stand between himself and God. For the ordinary purposes of everyday life the Temple, with its ritual and priesthood, provided a mediation; but for unforeseen contingencies and exceptional crises the Jews welcomed the belief that a ministry of angels provided a safe means of intercourse between himself and the Almighty. Many men have come to feel today that the discoveries of science have made the universe so infinite and marvelous that its Maker and Governor is exalted beyond human approach. The infinite spaces of the constellations seem to intervene between the earth and the presence-chamber of God; its doors are guarded against prayer and faith by inexorable laws; the awful Being, who dwells within, has become “unmeasured in height, undistinguished into form.” Intellect and imagination alike fail to combine the manifold and terrible attributes of the Author of nature into the picture of a loving Father. It is no new experience, and the present century faces the situation very much as did the chroniclers contemporaries. Some are happy enough to rest in the mediation of ritual priests; others are content to recognize, as of old, powers and forces, not now, however, personal messengers of Jehovah, but the physical agencies of “that which makes for righteousness.” Christ came to supersede the Mosaic ritual and the ministry of angels; He will come again to bring those who are far off into renewed fellowship with His Father and theirs.
On the other hand, the recognition of Satan, the evil angel, marks an equally great change from the theology of the book of Samuel. The primitive Israelite religion had not yet reached the stage at which the origin and existence of moral evil became an urgent problem of religious thought; men had not yet realized the logical consequences of the doctrine of Divine unity and omnipotence. Not only was material evil traced to Jehovah as the expression of His just wrath against sin, but “morally pernicious acts were quite frankly ascribed to the direct agency of God.” God hardens the heart of Pharaoh and the Canaanites; Saul is instigated by an evil spirit from Jehovah to make an attempt upon the life of David; Jehovah moves David to number Israel; He sends forth a lying spirit that Ahabs prophets may prophesy falsely and entice him to his ruin. {Exo 4:21, 1Sa 19:9-10, 2Sa 24:1, 1Ki 22:20-23} The Divine origin of moral evil implied in these passages is definitely stated in the book of Proverbs: “Jehovah hath made everything for its own end, yea even the wicked for the day of evil”; in Lamentations, “Out of the mouth of the Most High cometh there not evil and good?” and in the book of Isaiah, “I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I am Jehovah, that doeth all these things.” {Pro 16:4, Lam 3:38, Isa 45:7}
The ultra-Calvinism, so to speak, of earlier Israelite religion was only possible so long as its full significance was not understood. An emphatic assertion of the absolute sovereignty, of the one God was necessary as a protest against polytheism, and later on against dualism as well. For practical purposes mens faith needed to be protected by the assurance that God worked out His purposes in and through human wickedness. The earlier attitude of the Old Testament towards moral evil had a distinct practical and theological value.
But the conscience of Israel could not always rest in this view of the origin of evil. As the standard of morality was raised, and its obligations were more fully insisted on, as men shrank from causing evil themselves and from the use of deceit and violence, they hesitated more and more to ascribe to Jehovah what they sought to avoid themselves. And yet no easy way of escape presented itself. The facts remained; the temptation to do evil was part of the punishment of the sinner and of the discipline of the saint. It was impossible to deny that sin had its place in Gods government of the world; and in view of mens growing reverence and moral sensitiveness, it was becoming almost equally impossible to admit without qualification or explanation that God was Himself the Author of evil. Jewish thought found itself face to face with the dilemma against which the human intellect vainly beats its wings, like a bird against the bars of its cage.
However, even in the older literature there were suggestions, not indeed of a solution of the problem, but of a less objectionable way of stating facts. In Eden the temptation to evil comes from the serpent; and, as the story is told, the serpent is quite independent of God; and the question of any Divine authority or permission for its action is not in any way dealt with. It is true that the serpent was one of the beasts of the field which the Lord God had made, but the narrator probably did not consider the question of any Divine responsibility for its wickedness. Again, when Ahab is enticed to his ruin, Jehovah does not act directly, but through the twofold agency first of the lying spirit and then of the deluded prophets. This tendency to dissociate God from any direct agency of evil is further illustrated in Job and Zechariah. When Job is to be tried and tempted, the actual agent is the malevolent Satan; and the same evil spirit stands forth to accuse the high-priest Joshua {Zec 3:1} as the representative of Israel. The development of the idea of angelic agency afforded new resources for the reverent exposition of the facts connected with the origin and existence of moral evil. If a sense of Divine majesty led to a recognition of the angel of Jehovah as the Mediator of revelation, the reverence for Divine holiness imperatively demanded that the immediate causation of evil should also be associated with angelic agency. This agent of evil receives the name of Satan, the adversary of man, the advocatus diaboli who seeks to discredit man before God, the impeacher of Jobs loyalty and of Joshuas purity. Yet Jehovah does not resign any of His omnipotence. In Job Satan cannot act without Gods permission; he is strictly limited by Divine control: all that he does only illustrates Divine wisdom and effects the Divine purpose. In Zechariah there is no refutation of the charge brought by Satan; its truth is virtually admitted: nevertheless Satan is rebuked for his attempt to hinder Gods gracious purposes towards His people. Thus later Jewish thought left the ultimate Divine sovereignty untouched, but attributed the actual and direct causation of moral evil to malign spiritual agency.
Trained in this school, the chronicler must have read with something of a shock that Jehovah moved David to commit the sin of numbering Israel He was familiar with the idea that in such matters Jehovah used or permitted the activity of Satan. Accordingly he carefully avoids reproducing any words from the book of Samuel that imply a direct Divine temptation of David, and ascribes it to the well-known and crafty animosity of Satan against Israel. In so doing, he has gone somewhat further than his predecessors: he is not careful to emphasize any Divine permission given to Satan or Divine control exercised over him. The subsequent narrative implies an overruling for good, and the chronicler may have expected his readers to understand that Satan here stood in the same relation to God as in Job and Zechariah; but the abrupt and isolated introduction of Satan to bring about the fall of David invests the archenemy with a new and more independent dignity.
The progress of the Jews in moral and spiritual life had given them a keener appreciation both of good and evil, and of the contrast and opposition between them. Over against the pictures of the good kings, and of the angel of the Lord, the generation of the chronicler set the complementary pictures of the wicked kings and the evil angel. They had a higher ideal to strive after, a clearer vision of the kingdom of God; they also saw more vividly the depths of Satan and recoiled with horror from the abyss revealed to them.
Our text affords a striking illustration of the tendency to emphasize the recognition of Satan as the instrument of evil and to ignore the question of the relation of God to the origin of evil. Possibly no more practical attitude can be assumed towards this difficult question. The absolute relation of evil to the Divine sovereignty is one of the problems of the ultimate nature of God and man. Its discussion may throw many sidelights upon other subjects, and will always serve the edifying and necessary purpose of teaching men the limitations of their intellectual powers. Otherwise theologians have found such controversies barren, and the average Christian has not been able to derive from them any suitable nourishment for his spiritual life. Higher intelligences than our own, we have been told, –
” reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.”
On the other hand, it is supremely important that the believer should clearly understand the reality of temptation as an evil spiritual force opposed to Divine grace. Sometimes this power of Satan will show itself as “the alien law in his members, warring against the law of his mind and bringing him into captivity under the law of sin, which is in his members.” He will be conscious that “he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed.” But sometimes temptation will rather come from the outside. A man will find his “adversary” in circumstances, in evil companions, in “the sight of means to do ill deeds”; the serpent whispers in his ear, and Satan moves him to wrong-doing. Let him not imagine for a moment that he is delivered over to the powers of evil; let him realize clearly that with every temptation God provides a way of escape. Every man knows in his own conscience that speculative difficulties can neither destroy the sanctity of moral obligation nor hinder the operation of the grace of God.
Indeed, the chronicler is at one with the books of Job and Zechariah in showing us the malice of Satan overruled for mans good and Gods glory. In Job the affliction of the Patriarch only serves to bring out his faith and devotion, and is eventually rewarded by renewed and increased prosperity; in Zechariah the protest of Satan against Gods gracious purposes for Israel is made the occasion of a singular display of Gods favor towards His people and their priest. In Chronicles the malicious intervention of Satan leads up to the building of the Temple.
Long ago Jehovah had promised to choose a place in Israel wherein to set His name; but, as the chronicler read in the history of his nation, the Israelites dwelt for centuries in Palestine, and Jehovah made no sign: the ark of God still dwelt in curtains. Those who still looked for fulfillment of this ancient promise must often have wondered by what prophetic utterance or vision Jehovah would make known His choice. Bethel had been consecrated by the vision of Jacob, when he was a solitary fugitive from Esau, paying the penalty of his selfish craft; but the lessons of past history are not often applied practically, and probably, no one ever expected that Jehovahs choice of the site for His one temple would be made known to His chosen king, the first true Messiah of Israel, in a moment of even deeper humiliation than Jacobs, or that the Divine announcement would be the climax of a series of events initiated by the successful machinations of Satan.
Yet herein lies one of the main lessons of the incident. Satans machinations are not really successful; he often attains his immediate object, but is always defeated in the end. He estranges David from Jehovah for a moment, but eventually Jehovah and His people are drawn into closer union, and their reconciliation is sealed by the long-expected choice of a site for the Temple. Jehovah is like a great general, who will sometimes allow the enemy to obtain a temporary advantage, in order to overwhelm him in some crushing defeat. The eternal purpose of God moves onward, unresting and un-hasting; its quiet and irresistible persistence finds special opportunity in the hindrances that seem sometimes to check its progress. In Davids case a few months showed the whole process complete: the malice of the Enemy; the sin and punishment of his unhappy victim; the Divine relenting and its solemn symbol in the newly consecrated altar. But with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day; and this brief episode in the history of a small people is a symbol alike of the eternal dealings of God in His government of the universe and of His personal care for the individual soul. How short-lived has been the victory of sin in many souls! Sin is triumphant; the tempter seems to have it all his own way, but his first successes only lead to his final rout; the devil is cast out by the Divine exorcism of chastisement and forgiveness; and he learns that his efforts have been made to subserve the training in the Christian warfare of such warriors as Augustine and John Bunyan. Or, to take a case more parallel to that of David, Satan catches the saint unawares, and entraps him into sin; and, behold, while the evil one is in the first flush of triumph, his victim is back again at the throne of grace in an agony of contrition, and before long the repentant sinner is bowed down into a new humility at the undeserved graciousness of the Divine pardon: the chains of love are riveted with a fuller constraint about his soul, and he is tenfold more the child of God than before.
And in the larger life of the Church and the world Satans triumphs are still the heralds of his utter defeat. He prompted the Jews to slay Stephen; and the Church were scattered abroad, and went about preaching the word; and the young man at whose feet the witnesses laid down their garments became the Apostle of the Gentiles. He tricked the reluctant Diocletian into ordering the greatest of the persecutions, and in a few years Christianity was an established religion in the empire. In more secular matters the apparent triumph of an evil principle is usually the signal for its downfall.
In America the slave-holders of the Southern States rode roughshod over the Northerners for more than a generation, and then came the Civil War.
These are not isolated instances, and they serve to warn us against undue depression and despondency when for a season God seems to refrain from any intervention with some of the evils of the world. We are apt to ask in our impatience, –
“Is there not wrong too bitter for atoning?
What are these desperate and hideous years?
Hast Thou not heard Thy whole creation groaning
Sighs of the bondsman, and a womans tears?”
The works of Satan are as earthly as they are devilish; they belong to the world, which passeth away, with the lust thereof: but the gracious providence of God has all infinity and all eternity to work in. Where today we can see nothing but the destroying angel with his flaming sword, future generations shall behold the temple of the Lord.
Davids sin, and penitence, and pardon were no inappropriate preludes to this consecration of Mount Moriah. The Temple was not built for the use of blameless saints, but the worship of ordinary men and women. Israel through countless generations was to bring the burden of its sins to the altar of Jehovah. The sacred splendor of Solomons dedication festival duly represented the national dignity of Israel and the majesty of the God of Jacob; but the self-abandonment of Davids repentance, the deliverance of Jerusalem from impending pestilence, the Divine pardon of presumptuous sin, constituted a still more solemn inauguration of the place where Jehovah had chosen to set His name. The sinner, seeking the assurance of pardon in atoning sacrifice, would remember how David had then received pardon for, his sin, and how the acceptance of his offering had been the signal for the disappearance of the destroying angel. So in the Middle Ages penitents founded churches to expiate their sins. Such sanctuaries would symbolize to sinners in after-times the possibility of forgiveness; they were monuments of Gods mercy as well as of the founders penitence. Today churches, both in fabric and fellowship, have been made sacred for individual worshippers because in them the Spirit of God has moved them to repentance and bestowed upon them the assurance of pardon. Moreover, this solemn experience consecrates for God His most acceptable temples in the souls of those that love Him.
One other lesson is suggested by the happy issues of Satans malign interference in the history of Israel as understood by the chronicler. The inauguration of the new altar was a direct breach of the Levitical law, and involved the superseding of the altar and tabernacle that had hitherto been the only legitimate sanctuary for the worship of Jehovah. Thus the new order had its origin in the violation of existing ordinances and the neglect of an ancient sanctuary. Its early history constituted a declaration of the transient character of sanctuaries and systems of ritual. God would not eternally limit Himself to any building, or His grace to the observance of any forms of external ritual. Long before the chroniclers time Jeremiah had proclaimed this lesson in the ears of Judah: “Go ye now unto My place which was in Shiloh, where I caused My name to dwell at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of My people Israel I will do unto the house which is called by My name, wherein ye trust, and unto the place which I gave to you and your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh I wilt make this house like Shiloh, and will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.” {Jer 7:12-14} In the Tabernacle all things were made according to the pattern that was showed to Moses in the mount; for the Temple David was made to understand the pattern of all things “in writing from the hand of Jehovah.” {1Ch 28:19} If the Tabernacle could be set aside for the Temple, the Temple might in its turn give place to the universal Church. If God allowed David in his great need to ignore the one legitimate altar of the Tabernacle and to sacrifice without its officials, the faithful Israelite might be encouraged to believe that in extreme emergency Jehovah would accept his offering without regard to place or priest.
The principles here involved are of very wide application. Every ecclesiastical system was at first a new departure. Even if its highest claims be admitted, they simply assert that within historic times God set aside some other system previously enjoying the sanction of His authority, and substituted for it a more excellent way. The Temple succeeded the Tabernacle; the synagogue appropriated in a sense part of the authority of the Temple; the Church superseded both synagogue and Temple. Gods action in authorizing each new departure warrants the expectation that He may yet sanction new ecclesiastical systems; the authority which is sufficient to establish is also adequate to supersede. When the Anglican Church broke away from the unity of Western Christendom by denying the supremacy of the Pope and refusing to recognize the orders of other Protestant Churches, she set an example of dissidence that was naturally followed by the Presbyterians and Independents. The revolt of the Reformers against the theology of their day in a measure justifies those who have repudiated the dogmatic systems of the Reformed Churches. In these and in other ways to claim freedom from authority, even in order to set up a new authority of ones own, involves in principle at least the concession to others of a similar liberty of revolt against ones self.