The sands were running out fast. Only about three years remained for Israel's most famous king. He had achieved tolerable security from external enemies for his people and could bequeath a safe and reasonably prosperous kingdom to his successor. But there were enemies within the nation and he knew that after his death the destined ruler, his young son, Solomon, still less than twenty years of age, would need all his wisdom and sagacity to maintain his kingship. All that came out in his final charge to Solomon when he felt the shades of death closing round him.

In the meantime the old flair for organizing the affairs of the nation asserted itself. His military prowess was spent; no longer did he possess the physical strength to go out at the head of his armies to battle; in any case there were no longer any enemies, to fight. Israel had earned from the surrounding nations that healthy respect for her fighting qualities that never left her afterwards ‑ and remain to this day in this modern world. David had time to think of other matters and other ambitions having to do with the internal affairs of Israel, and more importantly, its religious condition before God.

Perhaps this is why he determined to take a census of the nation. 2 Sam. 24 and 1 Chron. 21 both tell how he ordered Joab to institute and conduct a comprehensive numbering of the people. He wanted to know just how many subjects he had and Joab was to investigate and report. Joab was appalled. "May the Lord multiply his troops a hundred times over. My lord the king are they not all my lord's subjects? Why does my lord want to do this? Why should he bring guilt on Israel?" (1 Chron.21.3)

There was always a prejudice in ancient times against the counting of peoples. It was partially based upon the superstitious idea that if the powers of darkness knew just how many people were involved in men's opposition to them, their strategy could be better directed to obtaining the victory. There was also the feeling that if the Lord was fighting for them their number was of no consequence, and therefore to take a census of this nature implied a lack of faith and would bring Divine censure upon them. So Joab made his protest.

David took no notice. Joab was told to obey and summarily dismissed from the king's presence to commence the discharge of his commission. 1 Chronicles says that it was Satan who moved David to undertake this census whereas 2 Samuel declares that "the anger of the Lord was burned against Israel. and he incited David against them saying. Go and take a census of Israel and Judah". The probable explanation of this apparent contradiction is that the word rendered "Satan" in 1 Chron. 21.1 means "an adversary" (the Hebrew word for "adversary" is "Satan"). Unless the context specifically demands the application of the term to the malevolent evil spirit popularly known as Satan, the term adversary should be used. 1 Chron. 21.1 should read "An adversary stood up against Israel and provoked David to number Israel". The combined import of the two passages then would be that some person unknown instigated the thought in David's mind to do this thing.

It certainly was not the Lord. It is quite illogical to think that if this action was displeasing to the Lord, and merited and received Divine retribution in consequence, it would have been suggested and inspired by the Lord in the first place. The action was inspired by man. The next question is, what was its purpose? Whatever the purpose, it was something which elicited Divine disapproval.

"The anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel" (2 Sam. 24.1) Note, not against David at this juncture, but against the nation generally. This can mean only one thing, that the nation was passing through one of its periodic times of apostasy, and consequently under the terms of the Mosaic Covenant was due for chastisement. If the occasion of the census became the means of chastisement, so be it. The Lord uses all kinds of agents to execute His purpose.

But why should the Lord be displeased at David's action in this matter. Says 1 Chron. 21.7. "God was displeased with this thing". There is nothing immoral in counting heads, no prohibition in the Mosaic Law; in fact God commanded both Moses and Joshua on two notable occasions to do this very thing. The element of evil must, therefore, have been not in the action itself but in the motive which inspired the action. Why did David, after nearly forty years of kingship, suddenly develop or had instilled into him this sudden passion for ascertaining the number of his people. He had never indicated any such desire before. What element was present in his reign at this time which was not there before?

One activity, and that a most noteworthy activity, did come to its culminating point at this period of David's reign. That activity was the collecting together of the materials and the preparation for the erection of the magnificent Temple that he had planned. But the Lord told him it would be built, not by him, but by his son Solomon, for he had been a man of blood, and that great Temple was to be a house of peace. The rather confused and disjointed narrative in 1 Chron. 22 to 28 gives an account of David's actions at this time. It would almost seem as if he sensed his approaching demise and was anxious to leave everything in order and readiness before his decease. There was a great coming and going between the land of Israel and that of Tyre, from which had to be obtained many cedars of Lebanon, floated down the coast from Tyre to Joppa and then hauled forty miles up the mountains, to Jerusalem. There was a great deal of quarrying of limestone from the Judean hills and its shaping by masons into large stone blocks; the casting and fabrication of gold and silver and copper into the ornamentation and furnishing of the building, and a great deal besides. All this required men, teams of labourers and foresters and hauliers and craftsmen toiling in the forests, quarries and factories, to give substance to this creation of David's ambition, to be the crowning glory of his reign. Those chapters in Chronicles, written long after the events they record, tell of the gathering of thousands of workers together to perform all kinds of tasks and the appointment over them of controllers, supervisors, taskmasters, to see that the work ordained was duly and expeditiously executed. When one thinks of the glory of David and Solomon's achievement in that magnificent Temple, rated by the ancients as one of the seven wonders of the world, one is apt not to realise the cost of it all in terms of toil and sweat and human suffering and death. "There are workmen with you in abundance" said David to his son. The various categories of workers is catalogued in a meticulous manner down to those who were allocated to "do the work of the ground for tillage". These were the growers of crops and fruits and keepers of herds and beasts of burden, apparently to feed and serve the hosts of manual workers engaged in this great project. All seem to indicate that David conceived and put into execution a comprehensive project for the regimentation and virtual harnessing of the entire nation for the completion of his great project.

Was it for that purpose he ordered the census, that he might ascertain the extent of his manpower resources, that the work might be planned accordingly, that every man in Israel might be assigned his place and directed to work therein? That at least could suggest a logical reason for David's otherwise rather incomprehensible action in sending Joab and his men to number all Israel and bring the results back to him. Suppose then that this was the reason; why should the Lord be "displeased with this thing" to the extent that He sent a pestilence upon Israel? Was not the Temple to be for His honour and was not the purpose that He might be magnified among all nations. Surely all this lavish display of earthly wealth and untiring human effort to His honour could be nothing but pleasing to him?

Perhaps not; perhaps the Lord looked beyond and underneath all this frenzied and much-proclaimed activity, and saw that all was not right, either with David or with his people. "The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool" He said much later on to Isaiah, "Where is the house that you build me, and where is the place of my rest?" All these things His own hand had made at the beginning, and He derived no particular joy from this great edifice, however magnificent, unless it was a spontaneous expression of the love and devotion and loyalty of His chosen people, and that, the narrative clearly implies, it was not. A lot is said in Chronicles about the willingness of the leaders of the nation giving of their wealth to assist in the compilation of the treasure of which the Temple was built; nothing about the lower orders who had to undertake the hard work. The implication is that they were just drafted into the service at the king's behest and that was that. When Moses built the Tabernacle in the wilderness the Lord's instruction was that each man and woman of Israel was to bring "of his own voluntary will" that which he or she could contribute to the achievement of that work. The people then were fired with an enthusiasm for, and a loyalty to, God and it was that spirit which the Lord honoured and accepted. Things were not the same in the days of David. The king was intent upon a lasting monument to the glory of his reign; that to him was synonymous with the glory of God, but there is no guarantee that the Lord also saw it that way. The notables and politicians and leaders, of the nation comprised a rabble of plotters and counter-plotters each ever on the alert to advance his personal interests and ambitions at whatever cost in injustice and suffering to others, even to the extent of murder. The people in general, despite David's own unflinching loyalty to his God and his example, were themselves, retrogressing back into the idolatry from which Samuel had rescued them a century before. We know that, from the statement in 2 Sam 24.11 "And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel." These words always mean the same thing. The people had apostatized from the Lord, repudiated the Covenant and turned again to idols. So the penalty of the broken Covenant had to come upon them as it had done so many times before. How could the Lord God of Israel receive and bless the offering of such a Temple to His glory at a time when the hearts of His people were so far from Him?

Twenty-five years earlier David had conceived this scheme of a magnificent Temple to the Lord to supersede the existing Tabernacle constructed by Moses (2 Sam. 7: 1 Chron. 17). On that occasion God had sent the prophet Nathan to tell him, in short, that He did not want such a house and that He was quite content to dwell with His people within the curtains of the Tabernacle. What was more important, Nathan went on to tell David, was that the Lord Himself would build David a house, a royal dynasty, that would culminate in the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ. He would be the King of all the earth, in the Millennial Day of man's redemption, ruling as a greater David to all eternity. That, to the Lord, was a much more important thing than the erection of a literal building upon earth which must inevitably, with the passage of time, wax old and vanish away, as in fact it did at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar's soldiers less than four centuries later. Now, at the end of his reign, David had revived the idea, doubtless believing that the Lord's promises regarding the glory of his successor Solomon whilst he maintained Israel's loyalty to God would incline him this time to accept the proposition and the offering.

So the pestilence which the Lord allowed to come upon Israel might well be regarded as a joint judgment upon David for his ambition and upon the people for their idolatry. It did at least have the effect of causing David to do what he ought to have done at the first, come before the Lord in humility and with sacrificial offering to ask the Lord's blessing and guidance on his project.

David, busy with his planning, the result of Joab's census before him, received a visitor, the prophet Gad. Gad was an old man by now; he had adventured with David since the early days when Saul was king and been with him in the dark days of David's exile in the wilderness. He was probably one of the very few men privileged to "speak his mind" to the king. (It is thought that Gad was the author of the narrative appearing as 1 Sam. 25 to 2 Sam. 9). Now he appeared in the royal presence with a message from the Lord.

The message, as usual, was uncompromising. David had sinned; he must accept the consequences. He had the choice of three options. Three years' famine, three months' invasion of the land by hostile enemies, or three days' pestilence decimating the people. Gad faced his sovereign, "Choose one of them". "I have sinned" said David dejectedly, "I have done very foolishly. Let me now fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great; and let me not fall into the hand of man"(RSV). The country had just survived three years of famine; he did not want any more of that. He was in no mood, even had he been physically capable, to lead his armies out against an invading host. Three days' pestilence would soon be over and the loss of life probably least of the three alternatives. "So the Lord sent pestilence upon Israel... and there died of the people about seventy thousand men" (2 Sam. 24. 15).

One might query the justice of the Lord inflicting death by pestilence upon seventy thousand Israelites as retribution for David's fault. It might not have been that way at all. It might well be that what the Lord did do was to restrain famine and invasion which was already poised to strike and allowed the onset of a pestilence which was on the way anyway. If all related factors are taken into account the position was that because Israel generally was in a state of apostasy (2 Sam. 24.1) all these things were due to come, irrespective of David's particular fault at this moment. Was the moral behind this happening the fact that had Israel been righteous and David without fault, none of these things would have smitten Israel? What the Lord did was to accept David's plea and allow only the lightest of the three natural disasters to fall upon the people as a kind of combined retribution for their own apostasy and the lack of real piety in David and to restrain the other two.

David's repentance was sincere, and his repentance was accepted. The prophet Gad came again to him and told him to erect an altar at the spot where the pestilence was stayed, on the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite. There he offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and made his peace with God. There, perhaps, at last, his life was cleansed from all arrogance and pride, ruthlessness and blood-guiltiness, leaving only the man of God who fifty years earlier had been described as a "man after God's own heart". Here the sterling faith and tenacious loyalty of the shepherd lad who faced the unbelieving Philistine with one small stone taken from the brook came to the top. He was once again God's man, a fitting type of the One who is to take His place on the throne of David, ruling for ever and ever.

It must have been so, for that piece of land on the top of Mount Moriah where David built his altar and made his reverent offerings to the Lord became hallowed for all time when Solomon not many years later built there the great Temple. That had been David's own ambition to build but which he had been forbidden so to do. That spot was to be famed ever after as the meeting place between God and Israel throughout the period of the Kings, a symbol of the Divine presence with His people, thus revered through the centuries to our own time. It is entered also in the annals of Heaven as the place where at last the often wayward and errant man whom God, who never makes a mistake, had chosen at the first, became fully and finally reconciled to the One who had never really let him go. So for the few remaining years of his life, David entered into an "afterward of peace".

In that, David is a true symbol of the course of mankind. He was chosen and decreed by God to be capable of great things, finding his destiny through dark and devious ways of stumbling and error, of selfishness and heedlessness, of outright violation of the laws of God. Yet he emerged at the end into the sunlight of the "glorious liberty of the children of God". David was shown then, as men will be shown at the end of God's dealing with them, when stripped of all the pollution and defilement of encircling sin, to be pure gold, resplendent in the Divine likeness.

So, at last, David found peace.

To be concluded.

AOH