Sermonette: God, Satan, and David's Numbering of Israel

#1801s
David C. Grabbe
Given 25-Jan-25; 19 minutes 2025-01-25

In one of the scenes in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the title character says to his friend, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." In other words, the universe contains things beyond what can be detected or explained by human knowledge. However, God’s Word gives us glimpses into the spiritual reality inhabited by the Father and the Son, and angels, both good and bad. These are the actors who govern life on earth, and yet which can only be understood through faith.

Today we will look at an incident in the history of Israel and one of its greatest kings. This event demonstrates the interplay between God and Satan, and it also teaches us about God’s justice, plus the nature and seriousness of sin. And along the way, we will also answer what appears to be a contradiction in Scripture.

Please turn with me to I Chronicles 21:

I Chronicles 21:1-2 Now Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel. So David said to Joab and to the leaders of the people, “Go, number Israel from Beersheba to Dan, and bring the number of them to me that I may know it.”

Now, please turn to II Samuel 24, where we find the other record of this event:

II Samuel 24:1-2 Again the anger of the LORD was aroused against Israel, and He moved David against them to say, “Go, number Israel and Judah.” So the king said to Joab the commander of the army who was with him, “Now go throughout all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, and count the people, that I may know the number of the people.”

We will start with the apparent contradiction. The chronicler says that Satan moved David to number Israel, while this account in II Samuel says that the LORD moved David.

There are a couple of ways to reconcile this. One way is to remember that the Hebrew word “Satan” means, “adversary.” Along these lines, the first usage of the word Satan is in relation to God. In Numbers 22:22, the Angel of the LORD stood as an adversary [a Satan] against Balaam. So, based on that, one way to reconcile this apparent discrepancy is that God stood up as an adversary against Israel because He was angry with them. There is no definite article before Satan in I Chronicles 21, and a couple of translations say that “an adversary” opposed or stood up against Israel, which allows for God to be that adversary.

But there is a second way to understand what happened that has more biblical support. That is, God and Satan were both involved in instigating the numbering of Israel. There is a clear example of God using Satan in the opening chapters of Job. In Job, Satan is the instrument of Job’s calamities. However, we also see that it was God who brought Job to Satan’s attention to goad Satan into challenging God to remove His protection. So, in the broadest sense, both God and Satan were responsible. God was ultimately responsible, but Satan acted within parameters that God set for him.

There is a similar event in the life of King Ahab. Hold your place here in II Samuel 24 and please turn to I Kings 22. This incident may stretch our sense of propriety and our concept of God. It may disturb us (it has disturbed me), but it is part of the record God left for us:

I Kings 22:19-22 Then Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the word of the LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by, on His right hand and on His left. And the LORD said, ‘Who will persuade Ahab to go up, that he may fall at Ramoth Gilead?’ So one spoke in this manner, and another spoke in that manner. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD, and said, ‘I will persuade him.’ The LORD said to him, ‘In what way?’ So he said, ‘I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And the LORD said, ‘You shall persuade him, and also prevail. Go out and do so.’

This fits with Hamlet’s sentiment that there are more things in heaven and earth than can be apprehended by men. Here is a testimony of a gathering of the host of heaven, both the loyal angels and the sinful ones. God asks for a way for Ahab to fall, and one of the demons proposes that he could deceive Ahab through Ahab’s prophets, and God accepts this.

Again, this can stretch our concept of God. But it shows that His sovereignty extends over all things, even over beings who have corrupted themselves. Even as God uses fierce and deplorable men like Nebuchadnezzar and Hazael as instruments of punishment, so God will use rebellious angels to accomplish His will. That is what we see here, as well as in Job.

Returning to the numbering of Israel, then, we can see how both God and Satan could have been behind David’s numbering of Israel, and the two different accounts simply emphasize one or the other. God wanted it to happen, and Satan broadcast the suggestion.

Now, maybe what happened to David seems a little unfair. It almost appears like God and Satan caused David to stumble, and then God punished David (and the nation) for the stumbling. But there is more to this story, so please turn back to II Samuel 24.

Verse 1 gives an indication that there was something larger going on. It says, “Again the anger of the LORD was aroused against Israel.” We are not told which previous time of God’s anger this refers to, but it is significant that this event is not far removed from David’s attempt to placate the Gibeonites back in chapter 21.

To recap that story, God had caused a famine in the land because of Saul’s massacre of the Gibeonites. David finally awakened out of his spiritual stupor, and his solution, rather than seeking God, was to deliver some of Saul’s descendants to pay for their father’s or grandfather’s sin. There were numerous problems with David’s state and actions, and I will refer you to Richard’s sermon entitled, “David and the Gibeonites” for the full story.

One is left with the feeling that God was not fully satisfied. After David handed over Saul’s descendants, God still allowed another full season of crop failure before the rains eventually came and the famine finally stopped. God did not intervene to restore Israel—He only allowed the normal weather cycle to resume. And between that event and chapter 24, almost nothing happens. So, when it says that God was angry with Israel again, there is a good chance it is tied to David’s handling of the Gibeonites.

Now, that numbering, by itself, was not a sin. This is a critical point. The nation had been numbered before this, and it was numbered after this. Conducting a census is not a sin. Solomon said that there is wisdom in the state of one’s flocks. In fact, there are even instructions in Numbers 26 that says, “When you take the census [here is how to do it].” Now, it has been suggested that the census was conducted in the wrong way, but that discussion will have to wait for another time.

Even so, when God moved David to number Israel, God did not cause him to sin. And yet, in verse 10, David says that he had sinned greatly. The problem was not the census.

The problem, or at least a problem, was David’s motivation. We find an indicator in verse 9, where the results of the census are described as, “valiant men who drew the sword.” This census was not for the sake of taxes, or for understanding demographics, but for military purposes. It was an accounting of military strength.

In doing this, David was thinking more about might and power than God’s Spirit (see Zechariah 4:6). He was looking to national resources rather than trusting in God, apparently having forgotten the lesson of relying on God for victory, as he did in his younger days. In addition, David’s previous campaigns had already expanded the kingdom up to the limits of what God had ordained. Any marshalling of the troops would have been against lands beyond what God had allotted to Israel. Any military campaign would go beyond the God-given limits of the nation. If that was a thought in David’s mind, it was presumptuous.

We can add to the picture by remembering David’s history, as well as the basic operations of the human heart when it is not fully submitted to God’s Spirit. David had come through a couple of significant challenges to his authority, including from within his own house. He had damaged his reputation through adultery and murder. That resulted in a significant loss of respect and trust from those under him.

These things were undoubtedly in the back of his mind as he surveyed his circumstances. Maybe he longed to be the hero of the people once again—to be admired and not just tolerated. Maybe he wanted to rehabilitate his image after tarnishing it so badly. As we see in politics today, military actions are great for distracting the people and giving the appearance of strong leadership. Perhaps he was looking for more giants to slay or seeking greater conquests or achievements. Maybe he just wanted something more exciting than shepherding the nation as God intended.

But whatever the exact motivation, the fact that David was contemplating his military might points to self-reliance at best, and selfish ambition and perhaps presumption at worst. But underneath it all, as with the matter of the Gibeonites, God was not in his thoughts. He was thinking about his own circumstances, his own achievements, his own solutions, maybe his legacy, rather than seeking what God wanted him to do.

Now, it is important to understand that thoughts of self-reliance, selfish ambition, and presumption are sin all by themselves. The great sin was in existence before the numbering of Israel. This means that the census was the evidence of a sin that was a reality in his heart—self-reliance and leaving God out, at the very least.

This is supported by well-known verses. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches that murder and adultery exist as sins in the heart even if they are not acted upon. Ezekiel 14 contains God’s charge against Israelites who had idols in their hearts. They committed idolatry even without bowing before graven images. Covetousness is a sin that takes place entirely within the heart, though it could lead to other sins as well. And finally, God records in Isaiah 14 what Helel said in his heart about ascending and exalting his throne. Helel was guilty of ambition and presumption even before he started the great angelic war.

Because God looks on the heart, He knew full well what was in David. Thoughts of one’s own strength, and of selfish ambition and presumption, are serious sins. David was correct that he had sinned greatly, but the way God looks at it, David was guilty before he sent out Joab to number the people.

What God did by moving David to conduct a census simply brought that sin out into the open, like a boil that needed to be lanced, so healing could begin. God did not tempt David to sin, let alone cause David to sin. God opened the way so the sin that was already in his heart would become manifest, and so David could realize how far he had moved from God, both in this action and in his handling of the Gibeonites.

Now, there is still the question of why, if God was angry with Israel, He brought out what was in David’s heart, and why, when David’s sin was manifest, God killed Israelites. In Romans 11:33, Paul exclaims, “How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!” God’s judgment is another thing that is not dreamt of in our philosophies. But there is an earlier event that can shed some light on this.

In Joshua 7, the man Achan acted alone, but God says multiple times that the children of Israel committed a sin. The theft and deception were perpetrated by one man, and yet God judged that the nation Israel had sinned. God’s judgment may fall on a group, even on a whole nation, for the action of one man. One sinful representative can affect many.

This may seem completely foreign, especially to we Americans with our tradition of individualism. In our view, if we did not do anything wrong, it is unfair and unjust for us to be involved in any judgment. But God looks at things differently. We cannot see everything as He does, and so His judgments are unsearchable by us. Our only recourse is to learn the lesson of Job, and to always justify God rather than ourselves, even when we do not understand. It must become hardwired into us that God is always right.

If we apply the Achan scenario to II Samuel 24, the picture emerges that David was the primary reason God was again angry with Israel. This lends credence to the possibility that chapter 24 was tied to David’s distracted handling of the Gibeonites. The census was a further demonstration that David was concerned with his own thoughts and plans and ideas, and not looking to God for direction.

After David got the results of the census—which took over nine months—it dawned on him that he was in error, and he took it to God and was given the choice of punishment. David deferred and asked God to choose, and God caused a plague that killed 70,000 Israelites, the greatest loss of Israelite life to that point. Even Jerusalem was under threat of destruction before God held back the hand of the destroying angel. God’s anger was great because something was seriously wrong in the nation, and specifically in the life of David.

In verse 17, David says to God, “Surely I have sinned, and I have done wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done?” God was angry with Israel, but David recognized that he was the guilty party, not the sheep. And, significantly, when David built an altar and made offerings to stop the plague, there is no mention of a sin offering, even though that would seem to be the most fitting. Perhaps a sin offering was made and was not mentioned.

But the offerings that are mentioned in verse 25 are the burnt offering and the peace offering. This indicates that David was rededicating himself to God, to being fully devoted to God once again, and seeking the fellowship with God that he had let slip away, leading to calamity. God, in His mercy and in ways that we do not fully understand, opened the door for David to see himself so restoration could begin at the place where the Temple would be built.

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