Still Searching for the King

2 Samuel 24:1-25

Main Idea: David’s census reveals that God’s people still search for the true King that is found in Jesus the Messiah.

1. A Senseless (and Costly) Census
   1. What was David doing exactly?
   2. Why was this census wrong?
2. The Deep Waters of Sovereignty
3. God’s Response and Ours
4. The Gospel According to David

Introduction

It should not surprise us that King David was a deeply flawed man whose life was full of foolish decisions and outright sinful behavior. He was, after all, simply a man and, like all of us, was liable to fall. What should surprise us, however, is how candidly Israel deals with David’s sin. This is Israel’s hero of heroes, the paragon of Israelite might and faithfulness, the man “after [God’s] own heart” (1 Sam 13:14 ESV). And yet David’s shortcomings are not covered up; in fact, they often take center stage in the biblical drama.

Perhaps no other story illustrates Israel’s strange way of honoring their national hero than the way the book of Samuel ends. David does not exactly end his reign as a failure, but what we see is certainly not the “happily ever after” we might expect.

A Senseless (and Costly) Census

Modern readers are liable to quickly lose their way through a passage like 2 Samuel 24:1-10. The order of events is clear enough (though the ancient city locations can muddy the waters some), but the motivation behind these actions is what confounds us. What was David doing exactly? Why was it wrong? And didn’t God initiate all this anyway? Let us tackle each of the first two questions in turn. The third, and most troubling, question we will return to once we have watched the entire story play itself out.

What Was David Doing Exactly?

Our first question is probably our last simple one: David was conducting a census of his entire country. Specifically he was concerned with counting the number of men who were (1) already in the army or (2) old enough to be drafted in the near future. There may have been other statistics the census workers gathered, but the only relevant detail we are given about the census results concerns the military: Israel and Judah have 1.3 million soldiers (v. 9). Quite an army.

The savvy reader will notice that the numbers mentioned in the parallel account (1 Chr 21) do not match the numbers here. Chronicles puts Israel at 1,100,000 and Judah at 470,000, while Samuel gives 800,000 and 500,000, respectively. While many contemporary critics assume the accounts are merely contradictory, a plausible reconciliation is at hand. First Chronicles 27 gives a detailed list of the Israelite standing army, numbering 288,000. The standing army seems to have been included in the 1,100,000 figure of Chronicles but omitted in the Samuel number. Thus Samuel outlines the number of prospective soldiers while Chronicles outlines the number of total soldiers—those already enlisted as well as those ready for drafting. Even compensating for this difference, of course, the numbers are not precisely identical. Accounting for the standing army, the Chronicles count sits at 812,000 and 470,000, while the Samuel count is 800,000 and 500,000. But the trailing 0s should serve to highlight that these numbers are obviously rounded figures. It is hardly a contradiction if the author of Samuel, knowing the precise figures, chose to use 800,000 and 500,000, much as we use broad figures in everyday speech today. When discussing the population of the United States, for instance, given differing circumstances, it may be equally valid to say that the current population of the United States is either 321,362,789 or 320 million.

Why Was This Census Wrong?

Most nations, modern as well as ancient, conduct censuses regularly. It is simply a matter of prudence: the government can only serve the interests of the people if they know who those people are. God had even given Israel regulations about census taking (Exod 30:11-16), so we cannot assume from this story that God is inherently anti-census. Something about this census specifically is out of order.

We get hints of this even from the dialogue between David and his commander, Joab. Joab does not provide us with reasons for his reluctance, but he lets David know that he finds the request troubling. In the end, however, David flexes his kingly muscles, and Joab is left with two options—follow orders or defy the king. He duly obeys. Ten months later the census is complete, but now David has come around to Joab’s opinion. Instead of congratulating everyone on a job well done, he cries out in distress, “God, have mercy on me for my sin!”

Before we examine the specific reasons David’s census is wrong, there was ultimately one reason: God did not want David to do it. Whether the issue is an ill-advised census or something more immediately relevant—like sexual ethics or financial stewardship—when God says no, our response must be to yield in submission. We may understand His restrictions. We may not. But we must always follow.

Our culture finds this kind of obedience unbearable. We assess God’s rules and decide that we will follow His laws if and only if we understand and agree with them. This is arrogance of the highest order. If there is a God, we must come to the point where we accept that He makes the rules, even if we fail to understand them at first. He knows better than we do, so humility demands that if we are unsure, we submit to the One whose knowledge far exceeds our own.

Don’t many of us intuitively know this from our own experience as parents? When one of our children grabs a fork and reaches to place it into the tiny slits in the wall that seem perfectly suited for that fork, how do we respond? “Don’t do that. Forks don’t go into the electric socket.” When the reply inevitably comes, “But why, Dad?” how often do we go into specifics? “Well, son, you see, at the subatomic level, there are tiny particles called electrons jumping between orbits. This creates what is called an ‘alternating current’ that travels through the wires in the wall. And if that current enters your body, it disrupts your central nervous system, burning your skin and possibly stopping your heart.” Go ahead and try that on a two-year-old and see if it does the trick. (We’re doubtful.) There should come a day when they understand electricity enough to know why fork-in-socket is a bad idea. But for now we are all content to say, “Don’t touch.” Why? Because we, the parents, love our children. And while they are young, we know much more than they do.

The gap between a toddler’s knowledge and ours, however, pales in comparison to the gap between our knowledge and God’s. Far too many of us have deceived ourselves into thinking that God is only a slightly stronger, slightly wiser version of us. He is not. He created every cell in our bodies. He made the blazing sun in the sky—not to mention the billions of other stars throughout our galaxy and the billions of galaxies in the universe—with a single word. Isaiah tells us that He stretches the heavens out as effortlessly as a man drawing back a curtain (Isa 40:22). In the face of such power, do we not feel powerless and weak? And yet we too often forget that not only is God’s power immeasurably greater than ours; so also is His wisdom far greater than ours.

God has reasons for every restriction, for every law, for every bit of wise counsel. Just because we fail to grasp those reasons does not mean they do not exist. Let us have the humility to follow God until we see as clearly as He sees. If we only obey God when He makes sense to us, then He has no business being called “Lord.” He is merely our advisor.

Now, back to David. The problem with his census hinges on a key word—delight. When Joab asks, “But why does my lord the king want to do this,” he uses a word that means “delight.” In 22:20 David rejoiced that God “delighted” in him. In Psalm 40:8 David said, “I delight to do Your will, my God.” But here in 2 Samuel 24 David apparently delights to know how many soldiers he has. His drive to number his people comes not from a desire to serve his nation but from delight in the size of his army. Behind this are three critical issues.

First, David’s delight is a manifestation of pride. He is trying to rejoice in how strong he has made the institution. We mentioned above how a census can be a reasonable act of service for a nation. But it can also be an act of hubris, a way for a king to prove to the world that he has become somebody. Thus, for instance, when Caesar Augustus desired to show the world just how mighty he was, his vehicle for showing this might was to conduct a census of the entire Roman world. Ironically, at the same time Caesar was “proving” how great he was by counting his people, God was demonstrating His greatness by counting Himself among Caesar’s people through the birth of His Son.

Second, David’s census betrays a lack of faith. He wants to see how well Israel might fare in a battle against their enemies. Once again David has forgotten the promises of God, who told him that victory would come not through Israel’s military size but through faith in their God. As David’s friend Jonathan had said, “Nothing can keep the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few” (1 Sam 14:6). David believed this as a teenager standing toe-to-toe with Goliath. But now that he has grown up, his trust is no longer in the God of his youth but in the size of his military.

Third, David’s census hints at a plan of military aggression. One of the main reasons you figure out how many fighting men you have is because you plan to pick a fight! David should have been delighting in God, trusting in God, and keeping his eyes on God. Instead, he was leaning on his military and looking out toward the potential conquest of other nations.

David’s census, when seen from this perspective, bears a tragic resemblance to Israel’s apostasy at the start of 1 Samuel. They wanted a king other than God to be their security and treasure; now David wants an army to replace God as his security and treasure. When any of us delights in something other than God—be that an army, a king, a bank account, a healthy family, or a life of moral goodness—we can be assured that we are in the same predicament as David. The result for Israel, for David (as we will see), and for us is always disastrous.

The Deep Waters of Sovereignty

We come finally to the third question, mentioned previously: Why was God so indignant about this census when He initiated it? Was God here the author of evil? How can we call Him good if He orchestrates situations like this and then punishes people for His decision?

We are sailing out into deep waters with questions like these, but we cannot help but ask them. And here is a detail that makes the waters deeper still: in the parallel account of this story, Satan—not God—incited David to count his army (1 Chr 21:1). The author of Samuel says that God incited David, and the author of Chronicles says that Satan did. It is difficult to imagine a contradiction more significant than confusing God and Satan. So we must conclude that here we face one of the most obvious contradictions in all of Scripture.

Or do we? Biblical critics are quick to point to these two passages as hopelessly irreconcilable, one example of many they claim discredit the authority of Scripture. They are right to point to these verses as significant. They are wrong, however, to assume that the biblical authors are so desperately confused that they cannot spot the difference between God and His greatest enemy. What we find in 2 Samuel 24:1 is a case study in a complex but not irrational subject—God’s sovereignty.

The Bible teaches that God sometimes allows us to fall prey to the temptations of Satan or our own evil desires. So in one sense God is not the one doing this. Satan is tempting us. Our flesh is inciting us. We are choosing to sin. But in another sense God remains sovereign over that process because He could have interrupted it if He so desired. He allows us to pursue evil not because He delights in it but in a way that even these evil decisions become part of His greater plan.

Seen this way, the statements in both 1 Chronicles and 2 Samuel are correct. The author of Chronicles looks at the scene from the ground level, so to speak, and rightly says that Satan was the one prodding David. The author of Samuel looks at the same scene from a different perspective and acknowledges that God had a sovereign purpose even in Satan’s acts. Nothing is outside God’s control. He works all things—even the horrendous and the seemingly pointless—according to His plan. Does this mean He approves of evil acts? Absolutely not! The sinful acts we commit are not God’s fault but are an exercise of the legitimate moral freedom God has granted us. And we are responsible for the decisions we make and the actions we carry out. Still, even these do not subvert God’s plan.

This is, admittedly, a mind-boggling mystery. God takes our free decisions, even the most malicious intentions of humanity and demonic forces, and uses those decisions for a perfect plan. We cannot speculate how He does it. But we must confess that He does it. Remember: God’s wisdom is infinitely higher than ours. If we could understand all His ways, that would only prove His wisdom is nothing better than ours. If our God does not sometimes confuse and confound us, then we are not dealing with a God that is worthy of our worship. We are, instead, worshiping a version of ourselves. Let us examine our hearts and put a little less confidence in our own ability to understand, and let us stop trying to make God as facile and one-dimensional as we are.

God’s Response and Ours

When the prophet Gad comes to give David the word from God, it probably made David wish Nathan had gotten the assignment instead. The word is patently harsh, and while David is given a choice, the options before him are all horrific (v. 13). He chooses divine pestilence over military rout and famine, and in the course of three days, 70,000 men are dead (v. 15). David had been dreaming of numbers for nearly ten months—but not this one. What began as a show of strength ends in weakness, blood, and tears.

This segment of the narrative raises more uncomfortable questions for the contemporary reader. We are prone to view God’s response as an overreaction (at best) or as morally despicable (at worst). Let us take each of those possibilities in turn and show why God was neither overreacting nor exhibiting moral wickedness.

First, while the text certainly majors on David’s sin, that does not therefore exonerate the rest of Israel. God is not responding to one solitary person’s sin by doling out punishment on 70,000 other unsuspecting and otherwise unaware individuals. The judgment comes to the nation of Israel because David had led the nation of Israel to sin.

Throughout the Old Testament, when God brings judgment on a society, He does so because the society has grown violent and depraved. The flood in Noah’s day was precipitated because God knew that “every scheme [humanity’s] mind thought of was nothing but evil all the time” (Gen 6:5). Sodom and Gomorrah, two towns obliterated by God’s wrath, are condemned because they oppressed the poor (Ezek 16:49). When Jonah was sent to proclaim judgment to Nineveh, it was a result of Nineveh’s brutal violence toward surrounding nations.

God does not delight in pouring out His wrath. As He told Moses, He is “slow to anger” (Exod 34:6), meaning that while He does become angry, it is not His first response. Yet God’s patience is not endless, and when a society reaches a certain threshold, God steps in to say, “Enough.” He will not allow the poor, vulnerable, and weak to sit under the thumb of oppression forever.

How does this connect to Israel? The census was, we recall, patently military in its scope. Israel was beginning to become a nation like its neighbors, looking to dominate and conquer. They were on the road to becoming a nation that, if left unchecked, would become characterized by violence, one God would be forced to oppose. So God stretches out His arm—not completely, as in previous judgments, but just enough to stem the tide.

In one sense, then, this judgment is actually a show of mercy. Had God not interrupted Israel’s trajectory, a future judgment would have been must worse. Seventy thousand slain is extreme, but it saved them from a much more devastating judgment later.

God still works like this in our lives today. When He sees us ruining our lives with sin, He cares too much about us simply to let us follow that course. So periodically He sends pain our way to protect us from a much worse judgment later on. We think when a husband, for instance, is caught in the middle of an affair that he is experiencing God’s wrath. But it is more appropriate to see that as God’s severe mercy. Wrath would be allowing the man to get away with it, continuing down the trajectory of sin.

This individual example, however, raises the second half of our question. “For the sake of argument,” you say, “I’ll allow that God wasn’t overreacting. But wasn’t the punishment a bit erratic? What about the innocent who died during this plague?”

Human suffering has always made people ask questions like this. Whether the context is 2 Samuel 24 or a tragic current event, in a thousand different forms the question arises: Why do bad things happen to good people?

In this particular context, as we have argued, Israel does not exactly qualify. The nation as a whole was implicated not only in the military expansion represented by the census but in other rebellious acts. Many of them had rebelled against David—God’s anointed king—first under David’s son Absalom, then again under a rebel by the name of Sheba. These were not “good people.”

A similar principle applies when it comes to evil in our lives today. We generally find pain and tragedy foreign in our lives because we assume we are innocent and good. We think we deserve good things. But Scripture paints a different picture. The human race is not a helpless and hapless group standing under the wrath of a capricious god. We are a rebellious and crooked bunch who repeatedly spurn the goodness of our Maker. We are not good. We do not deserve good things. These are uncomfortable truths, but they are truths we must accept if life is to make any sense at all. Every one of us deserves judgment.

The 70,000 who fell during this plague were not any different—cosmically speaking—than the millions who survived. If we understand the depth and the breadth of our depravity, what will surprise us is not God’s judgment but His mercy. After all, even on the eve of God’s judgment, David does not accuse God of injustice. Instead, he says, “Please, let us fall into the Lord’s hands because His mercies are great” (v. 14). Faced with the imminent death of tens of thousands, David was not frustrated with God’s wrath. He was confident in God’s mercy.

If we react against the idea of God’s wrath generally, it may be because we feel that we ourselves are not worthy of it specifically. The more we are persuaded of our own righteousness, the more the question of God’s justice troubles us. However, the more we sense the noose of God’s judgment rightly around our own necks, the more we will grow amazed at the greatness of God’s mercy and not the severity of His justice.

The Gospel According to David

There is a pernicious idea present in the church today that the Old Testament God is full of wrath and judgment but that by the time of the New Testament, He had matured. So instead of fire and brimstone, we get Jesus, meek and mild. Not only does this severely truncate the ministry of Jesus, but it also distorts the Old Testament image of God. As David learned at the threshing floor of Araunah, the Old Testament God was more merciful than we could ever hope.

Note the verb used of God in verse 16—relented. Some translations say that God “changed His mind” or “regretted” what He was about to do. We must be careful here. When we humans experience regret or change our minds, it is nearly always a result of having made some mistake. But as Numbers reminds us, “God is not a man who lies, or a son of man who changes His mind” (Num 23:19). Whatever else this word means, it cannot mean that God suddenly realized He had taken a wrong turn. His relenting was not a course correction. Instead, it was the overflow of His great pity on His people.

God had every right to flex His arm and demolish Jerusalem. But as so often happens throughout Scripture—as so often happens in our lives—God relents. His heart is grieved not because He has made a mistake but because His compassion for us is boundless. And so, on a day that could have been marked solely by death and disaster, God draws back His hand. At the spot God’s wrath subsided, God commands David to buy the field and build an altar there (v. 18).

What we do not see in 2 Samuel is that the threshing floor was atop Mount Moriah (2 Chr 3:1). This was the same place Abraham had offered the attempted sacrifice of Isaac, where God had stopped him and told him to offer a lamb instead. This threshing floor would later be the place where David’s son Solomon would build the temple, where Israel would come to offer sacrifices for their sins. All three of these scenes, occurring years apart at the same place, point to the same reality: one day there would come a sacrifice who would satisfy God’s wrath and take away sin forever—Jesus, the ultimate Lamb of God.

Jesus would accomplish what no previous sacrifice, no previous king could have accomplished. When Isaac’s spot on the altar was replaced by a ram, it meant the deliverance of Isaac—for a time. But Isaac would still one day die. When the lambs were sacrificed in Solomon’s temple, it meant the deliverance of Israel—for a time. But the sacrifices had to be made every day, every week, every year. And when David cried out to God, “I am the one who has done wrong. But these sheep, what have they done? Please, let Your hand be against me and my father’s family” (v. 17), he was offering himself as a sacrifice. David could never be that sacrifice. Yet David looked down at that field, and through history, and saw the Shepherd who really would be smitten for His wayward sheep.

Throughout 1–2 Samuel, as with most books in the Old Testament, we are left with a sense of disappointment. David was Israel’s great hope, but he was not the king Israel needed. Nor is this unique to 1–2 Samuel. Moses, the lawgiver, cannot go into the promised land because he broke the law. David, Israel’s greatest king, is a sinner who cannot save his people. He wishes he could die for them, but he cannot. Nehemiah, the rebuilder of Jerusalem, constructs a city that makes people weep in shame when compared to its former glory.

What we need is a Lawgiver who can both keep the law and redeem us when we break it, a Builder of a glorious kingdom that can never be shaken, a Shepherd who will not abuse His sheep but will die for them, a Father who will not neglect His children but will pursue them to the point of death and lay down His life for them, a King who will not sin against His people but will die in their place. That role could never be filled by Moses or David or Nehemiah. It was filled, once and for all, by Jesus Christ, God’s Son.

From first to last, David’s life is meant to point us to Christ. In Christ we find not only an example but a Savior, someone who both humbles us in times of strength and gives us hope in times of weakness. Jesus Christ is the only King who, if we receive Him, will satisfy us and, if we fail Him, will die for us. This is our King, and there is none like Him.

Reflect and Discuss

1. How does this passage help you understand God?
2. How does this passage of Scripture exalt Jesus?
3. How does this passage once again transition the story toward David’s failure as king?
4. Why is it once again important to recognize that David is not the perfect king?
5. How do you handle it when you do not understand God or why God has done something?
6. Do you have a general negative perception of the wrath of God? Why or why not? Write down your thoughts.
7. In what ways do you think God’s wrath and God’s mercy relate to each other?
8. How does Jesus beautifully picture both the wrath and the mercy of God?
9. Why does David command the military census?
10. Are there times in your life where you can identify the same kind of pride David experienced? When was it, and why did you exhibit such pride?