This week, we finish up our look at David. This is one of my all-time favorite passages to use in debating with Christians because it shows the hopeless situation of their stance from a rational perspective.
2 Sam 24:1-3 - Again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, "Go, count the people of Israel and Judah." So the king said to Joab and the commanders of the army, who were with him, "Go through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beer-sheba, and take a census of the people, so that I may know how many there are." But Joab said to the king, "May the LORD your God increase the number of the people a hundredfold, while the eyes of my lord can still see it. But why does my lord the king want to do this?"
2 Sam 10-15 - But afterward, David was stricken to the heart because he had numbered the people. David said to the LORD, "I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O LORD, I pray you, take away the guilt of your servant; for I have done very foolishly." When David rose in the morning, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Gad, David's seer, saying, "Go and say to David: Thus says the LORD: These things I offer you; choose one of them, and I will do it to you." So Gad came to David and told him; he asked him, "Shall three years of famine come to you on 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 the one who sent me." Then 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 us not fall into human hands." So the LORD sent a pestilence on Israel from that morning until the appointed time, and seventy thousand of the people died, from Dan to Beer-sheba.
An interesting bit of context here -- this story is paralleled in 1 Chronicles, but in the parallel passage, it is Satan who incites David to the "sinful" decision to count the people. This opens up an interesting conversation on contradictions in the Bible, if you're interested, but I'll ignore that aspect of this for the time being.
So -- what other points are interesting here? First, we see David in the position of being ordered by God to break God's law against counting the people. It appears that the law is not absolute. Looking into this issue a bit further, it seems that in Deuteronomy, there is a provision that would allow a census -- provided the people pay a census tax to keep God from killing them for the crime of being counted. Apparently, no one thought about this in this census. Perhaps this is evidence (if more were needed at this point) that Deuteronomy was written rather later than, for instance, 2 Samuel.
Next, let's look at the choices given David for the puishment for his sin. I noted that none of these choices would have boded well for the people of the nation: famine, disease or political upheaval. David appears to have thought that pestilence was the way to go, so God ends up wiping out 70,000 people who weren't even responsible for the crime of holding a census in the first place. I consider this a prime example of the rather bad idea that runs through the Bible of punishing the innocent in place of the guilty.
Comments?
