Year One, October 6

Let Me Fall Into the Hand of the LORD1

After many trials, David again enjoyed a time of peace. But this inactivity again brought him into temptation. He decided to take a measurement of his own greatness so he could glory in it.

  

2 Samuel 24:1-4; 9-15

1Again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them saying, “Go, number Israel and Judah.” (In the Book of Chronicles, we read that, “Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel.”2 Satan certainly was the one who tempted David and the blame for doing so falls completely on him. But the writer of the Book of Second Samuel saw the hand of the Lord in it. He informs us that the Lord used the sin of David as the way to punish the sins of the people. Both statements are true. There is no reason to try to force them to agree, because one truth must agree with another whether we see it or not.) 2So the king said to Joab, the commander of the army, who was with him, “Go through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, and number the people, that I may know the number of the people.” 3But Joab said to the king, “May the LORD your God add to the people a hundred times as many as they are, while the eyes of my lord the king still see it, but why does my lord the king delight in this thing?”

This time, Joab was not only right, but courteous as well. He knew that the people would think the reason for the census was for either new taxes or a military draft. Either way, numbering the people would make them uneasy and rebellious. Therefore he thought David’s plan was unwise. According to the law of Moses, “Everyone who is numbered in the census, from twenty years old and upward, shall give the LORD’s offering.”3 Even though this law had been ignored, Moses numbered the people because God instructed him to. But David acted as if they were his own people and counted them without asking God. The Lord would not put up with this.

4But the king’s word prevailed against Joab and the commanders of the army. So Joab and the commanders of the army went out from the presence of the king to number the people of Israel.

9And Joab gave the sum of the numbering of the people to the king: in Israel there were 800,000 valiant men who drew the sword, and the men of Judah were 500,000.

10But David’s heart struck him after he had numbered the people. (David ordered the census to give him something to brag about, but in the end, it only gave him something to be ashamed of. His army of over one-and-a-quarter million warriors gave him no joy, because he ended up bringing sorrow to his God.) And David said to the LORD, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O LORD, please take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have done very foolishly.” (God’s grace was in David and when it came to the front, he was quite ready to regret his mistake. Oh, that we all had a tender conscience like David’s!) 11And when David arose in the morning, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Gad, David’s seer, saying, 12“Go and say to David, (Just “David”. Not “David my servant” as it had been before. If we oppose God, he will oppose us.) ‘Thus says the LORD, Three things I offer you. Choose one of them, that I may do it to you.’”

13So Gad came to David and told him, and said to him, “Shall three years of famine come to you in your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ pestilence in your land? Now consider, and decide what answer I shall return to him who sent me.” 14Then David said to Gad, “I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hand of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man.” (He had a hard decision, but he chose wisely. David showed that for all his straying from the will of God, he still had a solid and loving trust in the Lord his God. A child of God always feels safest in his Father’s hands.)

15So the LORD sent a pestilence on Israel from the morning until the appointed time. And there died of the people from Dan to Beersheba 70,000 men.

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¹ 1 Chronicles 21:13

² 1 Chronicles 21:1

³ Exodus 30:14