2 Samuel24chapter 24

2 Samuel 24:1-2

Two Scriptures name two different agents for the same act. Here the anger of the Lord was kindled and he moved David to number the people; 1 Chronicles 21:1 says Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to the census. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the adversary as the active mover while God's supporting grace was judicially withdrawn, and Matthew Henry says the same in his own words, that Satan tempted while God permitted. Both texts stand as written, and the readings are named rather than resolved.

2 Samuel 24:3-4

Joab objects before a soldier is counted, asking why the king delights in a census at all rather than arguing that numbering itself is forbidden. Matthew Henry reads the objection as proof that many things not sinful in themselves turn into sin through the delight a man takes in them, a fault Joab could see in David though he never saw it in himself. The king's word prevails over Joab and the captains all the same, and Joab goes out to carry an order he had just resisted.

2 Samuel 24:5-9

The counters cross Jordan at Aroer and range north through Gilead toward Dan, then west toward Tyre and the Hivite cities, before circling south to Beersheba, tracing the whole land in nine months and twenty days. Joab returns a sum of eight hundred thousand swordsmen in Israel and five hundred thousand in Judah, and Albert Barnes reads the figures as partial, since Chronicles gives different totals and states plainly that Joab left Levi and Benjamin out of the count. John Gill takes the circuit itself as a mark of diligence, a task finished in ten months lacking ten days.

2 Samuel 24:10

The confession comes only after the tally is complete and laid before him, not during the nine months the counting took. David's own words name the census foolish and the guilt his own, I have sinned greatly, take away the iniquity of thy servant. Matthew Henry observes that conscience often wakes only after the pleasure a sin promised has already been collected in full.

2 Samuel 24:11-14

Gad is named David's seer, and the word of the Lord reaches the king through him rather than through the dream, Urim or prophet that failed Saul at 1 Samuel 28:6. Three judgments are offered, famine, flight before enemies, or pestilence, and Albert Barnes notes that Chronicles gives three years of famine where this text gives seven, a difference stated honestly rather than smoothed away. David will not choose between armies of men and settles on the third term by trusting the judge rather than bargaining the sentence, let us fall now into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great. Adam Clarke reads the choice as David's own nobility, since pestilence exposed him and his household to the same danger as the poorest man in Israel.

2 Samuel 24:15

The third judgment falls on the whole land, from Dan to Beersheba, the same reach used for the census in verse 2 now measuring the dead. Albert Barnes calls it the most destructive plague recorded against Israel, exceeding the fourteen thousand seven hundred of Numbers 16 and the twenty four thousand of Numbers 25. The stroke runs only until an appointed hour, a limit set before any word of mercy is spoken.

2 Samuel 24:16

The destroying angel is stayed over Jerusalem and stands at Araunah's threshingfloor, the ground later called Mount Moriah, the mountain of Genesis 22. Matthew Henry passes on Lightfoot's observation that the very place where Abraham was stopped from slaying Isaac is the place where this angel is stopped from destroying the city. The site is fixed in the narrative here, before David or the reader is told what it will become.

2 Samuel 24:17

these sheep, what have they done: David sees the angel and asks to bear the judgment alone, offering himself and his father's house in the people's place and calling them sheep, the same word once used of the flock he kept at Bethlehem. Matthew Henry reads the plea as a shadow of Christ, who gave himself so that God's hand fell on him rather than on the sheep. The king who numbered the flock out of his own vanity now asks to be counted for it instead.

2 Samuel 24:18-23

Gad returns the same day with an instruction rather than another choice, go up and build an altar on Araunah's floor. Araunah sees the king coming and bows himself to the ground, then offers the floor, the oxen for the burnt offering, and the threshing instruments for wood, refusing no part of what the king might need. Adam Clarke reads the offer as loyalty to the king, care for a people under plague, and regard for his own safety in one gesture, and Araunah closes it with a blessing, the Lord thy God accept thee.

2 Samuel 24:24-25

David refuses the free offer and buys the floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver, stating the principle the whole scene exists to teach, that an offering costing nothing is no sacrifice at all. Adam Clarke calls it a maxim from heaven, that a religion costing nothing is worth nothing, and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note that this fifty-shekel price bought only the floor and oxen, while a far larger sum recorded in Chronicles later bought the whole hill for the temple. David builds the altar, offers burnt offerings and peace offerings, and the Lord is entreated for the land; the two books of Samuel close on an altar bought at a price and a prayer answered, on the mountain that 2 Chronicles 3:1 names as the site of Solomon's house.