2 Samuel 24:10 Kommentar

INTRODUCTION TO SECOND SAMUEL 24 In this chapter an account is given of David's numbering of the people, Sa2 24:1; of the sense he had of his sin, and of his acknowledgment of it; and of the Lord's displeasure at it, who sent the prophet Gad to him, to propose three things to him, one of which he was to choose as a punishment for it, Sa2 24:10; when he chose the pestilence, which carried off a great number of the people, Sa2 24:14; and David was directed to build an altar to the Lord in the threshingfloor of Araunah the Jebusite, with whom he agreed for it, and built one on it, and offered upon it, and so the plague was stayed, Sa2 24:18.

And David's heart smote him, after that had numbered the people,.... For nine or ten months his conscience lay asleep, but now the thing was done, it is awakened, and accuses him for it, and he repents of it; now he began to see the pride and haughtiness of his heart; his vanity and confidence in the creature, which led him to it; aggravated by doing it without seeking to know the mind of God, and without giving him his due, the half shekel, according to the law, Exo 30:12; intent only upon increasing his own revenue, as some think, intending to impose a poll tax upon the people when he had numbered them; and attempting to number a people who were not to be numbered; and numbering those who were under the age of twenty, and therefore the plague began before it was finished, Ch1 27:23, and David said unto the Lord, I have sinned greatly in that I have done; he saw and owned his sin to be exceeding sinful, attended with very aggravating circumstances: and now I beseech thee, Lord, take away the iniquity of thy servant; the guilt of it from his conscience, which lay heavy there, and suffer not the punishment it deserves to take place on him, but grant an application of pardon to him: for I have done very foolishly; all sin is folly, and some sins are exceeding foolish, and so this appeared to David; or, "though I have done very foolishly" (b), yet forgive my sin, see Psa 38:5. (b) "quamvis", so Goassius notes it may be rendered; so Pool.

The characters, then, of rulers are so assigned according to the deserts of their subjects, that frequently they who seem to be good are soon changed by the acceptance of power. As holy Scripture observed of the same Saul that he changed his heart with his dignity. Whence it is written, "When thou wast little in thine own eyes, I made thee the head among the tribes of Israel." The conduct of rulers is so ordered with reference to the characters of their subjects, that frequently the conduct of even a truly good shepherd becomes sinful, in consequence of the wickedness of his flock. For that Prophet David, who had been praised by the witness of God Himself, who had been made acquainted with heavenly mysteries, being puffed up by the swelling of sudden pride, sinned in numbering the people. And yet, though David sinned, the people endured the punishment. Why was this? Because in truth the hearts of rulers are disposed according to the deserts of their people. But the righteous Judge reproved the fault of the sinner, by the punishment of those very persons, on whose account he sinned. But because he was not exempt from guilt, as displaying pride of his own free will, he himself endured also the punishment of his sin. For that furious wrath which smote the people in their bodies, prostrated the ruler of the people by the pain of his inmost heart. But it is certain that the deserts of rulers and people are so mutually connected, that frequently the conduct of the people is made worse from the fault of their pastors, and the conduct of pastors is changed according to the deserts of their people.

David is tempted by Satan to number Israel and Judah, Sa2 24:1. Joab remonstrates against it, but the king determines that it shall be done; and Joab and the captains accomplish the work, and bring the sum total to the king: viz.: eight hundred thousand warriors in Israel, and five hundred thousand in Judah, Sa2 24:2-9. David is convinced that he has done wrong; and the prophet Gad is sent to him, to give him his choice of three judgments, one of which God is determined to inflict upon the nation, Sa2 24:10-13. David humbles himself before God; and a pestilence is sent, which destroys seventy thousand men, Sa2 24:14, Sa2 24:15. The angel of the Lord being about to destroy Jerusalem, David makes intercession, and the plague is stayed, Sa2 24:16, Sa2 24:17. Gad directs him to build an altar to the Lord on the threshing-floor of Araunah, where the plague was stayed, Sa2 24:18. He purchases this place for the purpose, and offers burnt-offerings and peace-offerings, Sa2 24:19-25.

David said - I have sinned greatly - We know not exactly in what this sin consisted. I have already hinted, Sa2 24:1, that probably David now began to covet an extension of empire, and purposed to unite some of the neighboring states with his own; and having, through the suggestions of Satan or some other adversary, (for so the word implies), given way to this covetous disposition, he could not well look to God for help, and therefore wished to know whether the thousands of Israel and Judah might be deemed equal to the conquests which he meditated. When God is offended and refuses assistance, vain is the help of man.

HE, HAVING THREE PLAGUES PROPOUNDED BY GAD, REPENTS, AND CHOOSES THREE DAYS' PESTILENCE. (Sa2 24:10-14) David's heart smote him after that he had numbered the people. And David said unto the Lord, I have sinned--The act of numbering the people was not in itself sinful; for Moses did it by the express authority of God. But David acted not only independently of such order or sanction, but from motives unworthy of the delegated king of Israel; from pride and vainglory; from self-confidence and distrust of God; and, above all, from ambitious designs of conquest, in furtherance of which he was determined to force the people into military service, and to ascertain whether he could muster an army sufficient for the magnitude of the enterprises he contemplated. It was a breach of the constitution, an infringement of the liberties of the people, and opposed to that divine policy which required that Israel should continue a separate people. His eyes were not opened to the heinousness of his sin till God had spoken unto him by His commissioned prophet.

Numbering of the People, and Pestilence - 2 Samuel 24 For the purpose of ascertaining the number of the people, and their fitness for war, David ordered Joab, his commander-in-chief, to take a census of Israel and Judah. Joab dissuaded him from such a step; but inasmuch as the king paid no attention to his dissuasion, he carried out the command with the help of the military captains (Sa2 24:1-9). David very speedily saw, however, that he had sinned; whereupon the prophet Gad went to him by the command of Jehovah to announce the coming punishment, and give him the choice of three different judgments which he placed before him (Sa2 24:10-13). As David chose rather to fall into the hand of the Lord than into the hand of men, God sent a pestilence, which carried off seventy thousand men in one day throughout the whole land, and had reached Jerusalem, when the Lord stopped the destroying angel in consequence of the penitential prayer of David (Sa2 24:14-17), and sent Gad to the king to direct him to build an altar to the Lord on the spot where the destroying angel had appeared to him (Sa2 24:18). Accordingly David bought the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite, built an altar upon it, and sacrificed burnt-offerings and thank-offerings, after which the plague was stayed (Sa2 24:19-25). This occurrence, which is introduced in the parallel history in 1 Chron 21 between David's wars and his arrangements for a more complete organization of the affairs of the nation, belongs undoubtedly to the closing years of David's reign. The mere taking of a census, as a measure that would facilitate the general organization of the kingdom, could not in itself be a sinful act, by which David brought guilt upon himself, or upon the nation, before God. Nevertheless it is not only represented in Sa2 24:1 as a manifestation of the wrath of God against Israel, but in Sa2 24:3 Joab seeks to dissuade the king from it as being a wrong thing; and in Sa2 24:10 David himself admits that it was a grievous sin against God, and as a sin it is punished by the Lord (Sa2 24:12.). In what, then, did David's sin consist? Certainly not in the fact that, when taking the census, "he neglected to demand the atonement money, which was to be raised, according to Exo 30:12., from all who were numbered, because the numbering of the people was regarded in itself as an undertaking by which the anger of God might easily be excited," as Josephus and Bertheau maintain; for the Mosaic instructions concerning the atonement money had reference to the incorporation of the people into the army of Jehovah (see at Exo 30:13-14), and therefore did not come into consideration at all in connection with the census appointed by David as a purely political measure. Nor can we imagine that David's sin consisted merely in the fact that he "entered upon the whole affair from pride and vain boasting," or that "he commanded the census from vanity, inasmuch as he wanted to have it distinctly set before his own eyes how strong and mighty he was" (Buddeus, Hengstenberg, and others); for although pride and vanity had something to do with it, as the words of Joab especially seem to indicate, David was far too great a man to allow us to attribute to him a childish delight in the mere number of souls in his kingdom. The census had certainly a higher purpose than this. It is very evident from Ch1 27:23-24, where it is mentioned again that it was connected with the military organization of the people, and probably was to be the completion of it. David wanted to know the number of his subjects, not that he might be able to boast of their multitude, nor that he might be able to impose all kinds of taxes upon every town and village according to their houses and inhabitants, as Ewald maintains; but that he might be fully acquainted with its defensive power, though we can neither attribute to him the definite purpose "of transforming the theocratic sacred state into a conquering world-state" (Kurtz), nor assume that through this numbering the whole nation was to be enrolled for military service, and that thirst for conquest was the motive for the undertaking. The true kernel of David's sin was to be found, no doubt, in self-exaltation, inasmuch as he sought for the strength and glory of his kingdom in the number of the people and their readiness for war. This sin was punished. "Because David was about to boast proudly and to glory in the number of his people, God determined to punish him by reducing their number either by famine, war, or pestilence" (Seb. Schmidt). At the same time, the people themselves had sinned grievously against God and their king, through the two rebellions headed by Absalom and Sheba.

David's heart, i.e., his conscience, smote him, after he had numbered the people, or had given orders for the census to be taken. Having now come to a knowledge of his sin, he prayed to the Lord for forgiveness, because he had acted foolishly. The sin consisted chiefly in the self-exaltation which had led to this step (see the introductory remarks). Sa2 24:11-13 When he rose up in the morning, after he had calmly reflected upon the matter during the night upon his bed, and had been brought to see the folly of his determination, the prophet Gad came to him by the command of God, pointed out to him his fault, and foretold the punishment that would come from God. "Shall seven years of famine come upon thy land, or three months of flight before thine oppressors that they may pursue thee, or shall there be three days of pestilence in thy land? Now mark and see what answer I shall bring to Him that sendeth me." These three verses form one period, in which גד ויּבא (Sa2 24:13) answers as the consequent to וגו דּוד ויּקם in Sa2 24:11, and the words from יהוה וּדבר (Sa2 24:11) to ואעשׂה־לּך) (Sa2 24:12) form a circumstantial clause inserted between. וגו יהוה וּדבר י: "and the word of the Lord had taken place (gone forth) to Gad, David's seer, saying, Go ... thus saith Jehovah, I lay upon thee three (things or evils); choose thee one of them that I may do it to thee." Instead of על נטל, to lay upon, we find נטה in the Chronicles, "to turn upon thee." The three things are mentioned first of all in connection with the execution of Gad's commission to the king. Instead of seven years of famine, we find three years in the Chronicles; the Septuagint has also the number three in the passage before us, and apparently it is more in harmony with the connection, viz., three evils to choose from, and each lasting through three divisions of time. But this agreement favours the seven rather than the three, which is open to the suspicion of being intentionally made to conform to the rest. נסך is an infinitive: "thy fleeing," for that thou fliest before thine enemies. In the Chronicles the last two evils are described more fully, but the thought is not altered in consequence. Sa2 24:14 David replied, "I am in great trouble. Let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for His mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of men." Thus David chose the third judgment, since pestilence comes directly from God. On the other hand, in flight from the enemy, he would have fallen into the hands of men. It is not easy to see, however, how far this could apply to famine; probably inasmuch as it tends more or less to create dependence upon those who are still in possession of the means of life. Sa2 24:15 God then gave (sent) a pestilence into (upon) Israel, "from the morning till the time of the assembly;" and there died of the people in the whole land (from Dan to Beersheba) seventy thousand men. "From the morning:" on which Gad had foretold the punishment. The meaning of מועד ועד־עת is doubtful. The rendering "to the time appointed," i.e., "till the expiration of the three days," in support of which the Vulgate (ad tempus constitutum) is wrongly appealed to, is precluded not only by the circumstance that, according to Sa2 24:16, the plague was stayed earlier because God repented Him of the evil, so that it did not last so long as was at first appointed, but also by the grammatical difficulty that מועד עת has no article, and can only be rendered "for an (not for the) appointed time." We meet with two different explanations in the ancient versions: one in the Septuagint, ἕως ὥρας ἀρίστου, "till the hour of breakfast," i.e., till the sixth hour of the day, which is the rendering also adopted by the Syriac and Arabic as well as by Kimchi and several of the Rabbins; the other in the Chaldee (Jonathan), "from the time at which the sacrifice is commonly slain until it is consumed." Accordingly Bochart explains מועד את as signifying "the time at which the people came together for evening prayers, about the ninth hour of the day, i.e., the third hour in the afternoon" (vid., Act 3:1). The same view also lies at the foundation of the Vulgate rendering, according to the express statement of Jerome (traditt. Hebr. in 2 libr. Regum): "He calls that the time appointed, in which the evening sacrifice was offered." It is true that this meaning of מועד cannot be established by precisely analogous passages, but it may be very easily deduced from the frequent employment of the word to denote the meetings and festivals connected with the worship of God, when it generally stands without an article, as for example in the perfectly analogous מועד יום (Hos 9:5; Lam 2:7, Lam 2:22); whereas it is always written with the article when it is sued in the general sense of a fixed time, and some definite period is referred to. (Note: The objections brought against this have no force in them, viz., that, according to this view, the section must have been written a long time after the captivity (Clericus and Thenius), and that "the perfectly general expression 'the time of meeting' could not stand for the time of the afternoon or evening meeting" (Thenius): for the former rests upon the assumption that the daily sacrifice was introduced after the captivity, - an assumption quite at variance with the historical facts; and the latter is overthrown by the simple remark, that the indefinite expression derived its more precise meaning from the legal appointment of the morning and evening sacrifice as times of meeting for the worship of God, inasmuch as the evening meeting was the only one that could be placed in contrast with the morning.) We must therefore decide in favour of the latter. But if the pestilence did not last a whole day, the number of persons carried off by it (70,000 men) exceeded very considerably the number destroyed by the most violent pestilential epidemics on record, although they have not unfrequently swept off hundreds of thousands in a very brief space of time. But the pestilence burst upon the people in this instance with supernatural strength and violence, that it might be seen at once to be a direct judgment from God. Sa2 24:16 The general statement as to the divine judgment and its terrible effects is followed by a more minute description of the judgment itself, and the arrest of the plague. "When the destroying angel ('the angel' is defined immediately afterwards as 'the angel that destroyed the people') stretched out his hand towards Jerusalem to destroy it, Jehovah repented of the evil (for this expression, see Exo 32:14; Jer 26:13, Jer 26:19, etc.; and for the repentance of God, the remarks on Gen 6:6), and He commanded the angel, Enough! stay now thine hand." This implies that the progress of the pestilence was stayed before Jerusalem, and therefore that Jerusalem itself was spared. "And the angel of Jehovah was at the threshing-floor of Aravnah the Jebusite." These words affirm most distinctly that the destroying angel was visible. According to Sa2 24:17, David saw him there. The visible appearance of the angel was to exclude every thought of a natural land plague. The appearance of the angel is described more minutely in the Chronicles: David saw him standing by the threshing-floor of Aravnah between heaven and earth with a drawn sword in his hand, stretched out over Jerusalem. The drawn sword was a symbolical representation of the purpose of his coming (see at Num 22:23 and Jos 5:13). The threshing-floor of Aravnah was situated, like all other threshing-floors, outside the city, and upon an eminence, or, according to the more precise statement which follows, to the north-east of Zion, upon Mount Moriah (see at Sa2 24:25). According to the Chethib of Sa2 24:16, the name of the owner of the floor was האורנה, of Sa2 24:18 ארניה, and of Sa2 24:20 (twice) ארונה. This last form also occurs in Sa2 24:22, Sa2 24:23, and Sa2 24:24, and has been substituted by the Masoretes as the Keri in Sa2 24:16 and Sa2 24:18. In the Chronicles, on the other hand, the name is always written ארנן (Ornan), and hence in the Septuagint we find Ὄρνα in both texts. "The form ארונה (Aravnah) has not a Hebrew stamp, whereas Orna and Ornan are true Hebrew formations. But for this very reason Aravnah appears to be derived from an ancient tradition" (Bertheau). Sa2 24:17 When David saw the angel, he prayed to the Lord (he and the elders being clothed in mourning costume: Chron.): "Behold, I have sinned, and I have acted perversely; but these, the flock, what have they done? Let Thy hand come upon me and my house." The meaning is: I the shepherd of Thy people have sinned and transgressed, but the nation is innocent; i.e., not indeed free from every kind of blame, but only from the sin which God was punishing by the pestilence. It belongs to the very nature of truly penitential prayer, that the person praying takes all the blame upon himself, acknowledges before God that he alone is deserving of punishment, and does not dwell upon the complicity of others for the sake of palliating his own sin in the sight of God. We must not infer, therefore, from this confession on the part of David, that the people, whilst innocent themselves, had had to atone only for an act of transgression on the part of their king. Sa2 24:18 David's prayer was heard. The prophet Gad came and said to him by command of Jehovah, "Go up, and erect an altar to the Lord upon the floor of Aravnah the Jebusite." This is all that is communicated here of the word of Jehovah which Gad was to convey to the king; the rest is given afterwards, as is frequently the case, in the course of the subsequent account of the fulfilment of the divine command (Sa2 24:21). David was to build the altar and offer burnt-offerings and supplicatory-offerings upon it, to appease the wrath of Jehovah. The plague would then be averted from Israel.