And again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel — again ties this to the famine of 21:1, the other half of the appendix; what Israel had done the text does not say. And he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah. The Hebrew says he moved, and in the KJV the he is the LORD. 1 Chronicles 21:1 tells the same story and reads Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel. This is one of the best-known differences in the Old Testament, and the study names it plainly: the one book says the LORD moved David, and the other says an adversary did.

The usual ways of holding the two together: that Scripture speaks of God as doing what He permits — Job 1-2, where the LORD allows Satan's hand, and 1 Kings 22:19-23, where a lying spirit goes by the LORD's leave, are the parallels; that Samuel gives the first cause and Chronicles the second, both true; or that the Chronicler's satan is an adversary, not yet the proper name, so that either text may be read with the other. Some readers simply say the two authors saw the same event from different sides. The study asserts none as the only answer, and notes what both books agree on: David chose, David sinned (v. 10), and God was behind the whole, in judgment and in mercy.

Of all men, Joab objects — the soldier who killed Abner, Absalom and Amasa sees the wrong in a census that the king does not. Why doth my lord the king delight in this thing? Why was it a sin? The text never says. Readers have supposed pride in numbers, trust in the arm of flesh rather than the LORD who saveth not with sword and spear (1 Samuel 17:47), a step toward conscription and the heavy kingship Samuel warned of (1 Samuel 8:11-17), or the ransom of Exodus 30:12 unpaid, that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them — the last has struck many, since a plague follows. The study holds the possibilities open; the narrator leaves the sin unnamed and the guilt plain.

Notwithstanding the king's word prevailed against Joab, and against the captains of the host (v. 4). The man who had overruled Joab about Absalom in vain now overrules him about this, and the one time Joab is right the king does not listen. The study notes it without irony; it is the way of a long reign that the warnings come from the wrong people. Verses 5-8 trace the route — over Jordan to Aroer, north through Gilead to Dan, west to Sidon and Tyre, south to Beersheba — nine months and twenty days: a whole kingdom counted. 1 Chronicles 21:6 adds that Joab left Levi and Benjamin out, for the king's word was abominable to Joab.

Eight hundred thousand valiant men that drew the sword in Israel, five hundred thousand in Judah. 1 Chronicles 21:5 gives a thousand thousand and an hundred thousand for Israel and four hundred threescore and ten thousand for Judah. The figures do not agree, and the study does not pretend they do. The usual suggestions: that one count includes a standing force the other omits; that Chronicles' note about Levi and Benjamin (21:6) explains part of the gap; that the numbers are round; or that the Hebrew word for thousand may in military lists mean a unit rather than a count of a thousand men. Each has been argued; none is certain.

Readers should not let the arithmetic hide the point. The sum is reported to the king in a single verse, with no comment, and the next verse begins and David's heart smote him. The number he wanted is the number that condemns him; the census that was to show him his strength shows him his sin. The study notes that the narrator spends four verses on the route and one on the result, and that the result is the only thing in the chapter that does nothing — it is never used, and the plague makes it false within days. What a man counts to be sure of, Scripture says, is the thing he will be least sure of.

And David's heart smote him — the phrase of 1 Samuel 24:5, when he had cut Saul's skirt; the conscience that was silent through chapter 11 until Nathan came speaks here on its own, before any prophet. I have sinned greatly in that I have done... take away the iniquity of thy servant; for I have done very foolishly. The confession is full and unforced: sinned, iniquity, foolishly, no excuse and no mention of the LORD's moving in verse 1. The study notes that David, who knew verse 1 if anyone did, does not plead it. Whatever is true of the first cause, the man says the sin is his. That is how Scripture holds verse 1 and verse 10 together.

The prayer is answered, but not with the removal of consequences. The word of the LORD came unto the prophet Gad, David's seer (v. 11) — the Gad of 1 Samuel 22:5, who had sent David out of Moab into Judah long before — with an offer no one else in Scripture receives: I offer thee three things; choose thee one of them (v. 12). Readers should see that the confession of verse 10 comes before the choice, and that the choice is given to a forgiven man. Psalm 32:5, I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin, has long been read beside this verse; the study offers it as a fitting companion, not a proven one.

The three things (v. 13): seven years of famine — 1 Chronicles 21:12 and the Greek Old Testament have three, matching the three months and three days, and many take three as original; the study notes it — three months of flight before thine enemies, or three days' pestilence. Years, months, days: the shorter the time, the more directly the hand of God. I am in a great strait — and then one of the best-known sentences in the book: let us fall now into the hand of the LORD; for his mercies are great: and let me not fall into the hand of man. David chooses the judgment that comes without a human hand between him and God.

Readers have asked whether the choice was selfish — famine and flight would fall on the king as much as on the people, pestilence might not — and the study notes the question without presuming to answer it; verse 17 shows a man asking that the hand be on him. What the verse teaches is clear: that David had learned, through Shimei and Absalom and Joab, how men's hands deal with the fallen, and had learned, through Nathan, how God's does. His mercies are great — plural, tender mercies — is said while choosing a plague. The church has taken that as the confession of a man who would rather be judged by God than spared by men, and has found it wise.

So the LORD sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning even to the time appointed (v. 15) — whether the full three days or a shorter span, the Hebrew leaves open — and there died of the people from Dan even to Beersheba seventy thousand men. The study does not soften the number: the people counted for the king's pride die for it, from Dan to Beersheba, the span of the census (v. 2). Then the angel — the angel that destroyed the people, recalling the destroyer of Exodus 12:23 — reaches Jerusalem, and the LORD repented him of the evil... It is enough: stay now thine hand. God is spoken of as men speak, relenting; Scripture uses the figure freely (Exodus 32:14; Jonah 3:10).

And the angel of the LORD was by the threshingplace of Araunah the Jebusite. Araunah — Ornan in Chronicles — is a Jebusite, one of the people David took the city from (5:6-9), still holding land on the hill north of it; a threshingfloor is a flat open rock on high ground where the wind blows. Here the destroyer stops. 1 Chronicles 21:16 adds what Samuel does not: that David and the elders saw the angel of the LORD stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem. The study takes the two accounts together as the fuller picture, and notes that 2 Chronicles 3:1 will name this floor as the site of Solomon's temple — mount Moriah.

Lo, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly: but these sheep, what have they done? let thine hand, I pray thee, be against me, and against my father's house. The shepherd of Bethlehem speaks as a shepherd at the end: the people are these sheep, and he asks to take their place. It is the prayer of Moses — blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book (Exodus 32:32) — and the wish of Mahanaim — would God I had died for thee (18:33) — made now not for one son but for a nation. The study notes that the prayer is answered not by David's death but by an altar (v. 18), and lets the reader consider why.

There is a difficulty readers have felt: verse 1 said the LORD's anger was against Israel, so that the sheep were not, in the text's own terms, innocent, and David's what have they done? is a shepherd's plea, not a verdict. The study holds both. The king's sin brought the plague, the people's sin lay behind the king's, and the king, seeing the sword over Jerusalem, asks that it fall on him. Nothing in the chapter is more like the Christ the church has seen in David than this verse, and nothing shows the difference more: David offers himself and is not taken; the Son of David offered Himself and was.

Gad brings the remedy — Go up, rear an altar unto the LORD in the threshingfloor of Araunah (v. 18) — and David goes as the LORD commanded (v. 19). Araunah bows, asks the king's errand, and hears it: To buy the threshingfloor of thee, to build an altar unto the LORD, that the plague may be stayed (v. 21). He offers everything at once — oxen for burnt sacrifice, and threshing instruments and other instruments of the oxen for wood (v. 22) — as a king (v. 23: the Hebrew may mean Araunah the king, a title or a courtesy, and the study does not decide), with a blessing: The LORD thy God accept thee. A Jebusite gives the LORD's altar its first gift.

Nay; but I will surely buy it of thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the LORD my God of that which doth cost me nothing. The book's last word on worship, and one of its most quoted. Sacrifice that costs the offerer nothing is not sacrifice; the water of Bethlehem (23:16-17) was poured out on the same principle. Fifty shekels of silver — 1 Chronicles 21:25 has six hundred shekels of gold by weight; many suppose Samuel prices the floor and oxen and Chronicles the whole site; the study offers that as one explanation, not a settled one. Araunah's floor was bought, not taken: the temple would stand on paid-for ground.

And David built there an altar unto the LORD, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings — the offering of atonement and the offering of fellowship, as at Sinai (Exodus 24:5). So the LORD was intreated for the land — the verb of 21:14, closing the second half of the appendix as it closed the first — and the plague was stayed from Israel. The book ends here, on an altar where the destroyer stopped. Readers should mark what the last verse of 2 Samuel is about: not the throne, not the wars, not the sons, but a sinner, an altar, and a plague stayed. 1 Kings 1 will open with the old king cold in his bed and the throne in dispute; this is the note the narrator chose to end on.

2 Chronicles 3:1 says that Solomon began to build the house of the LORD at Jerusalem in mount Moriah... in the place that David had prepared in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite. The study states the link as Chronicles states it: this floor became the temple mount, and 1 Chronicles 22:1 records David saying so — This is the house of the LORD God, and this is the altar. The place where judgment stopped became the place where Israel met God. The further link to Abraham's Moriah (Genesis 22:2) rests on the name in Chronicles and is traditional; the study notes it as such. The church's reading of the altar as pointing to the cross is given below as the church's.