Plague Year Homilies: David and the Census
The second book of Samuel, which recounts the life and rule of King David, ends with several passages we would call “appendices,” because they appear to be tacked on by the editors of the book. It’s either difficult to put them into the history, or they are like commentaries or prayers that are inspired by God, but not clearly fitting into one place or another in the book. Today we have read a particularly difficult one, the story of David’s census and the plague that followed it.
First of all, we have to remember that God does not get “ticked off” at anybody. His consistent attitude toward the human race, and especially the people of Israel, is self-giving love. That was most seriously seen in the gift of His Son, Jesus, for our salvation. But the ancient human writers of the OT had a very black-and-white view of the world. If something good happened, it was God’s doing. If something bad happened, that also was God’s work. And those bad things must, in their view, have been due to human sin. They must be punishments for sin, either in the people or the ruler.
Now today’s reading recounts, it appears, both situations. The Lord’s anger was kindled against the whole people, and so He pushed David into taking a census. David even later recognized that this action was a sin against God. How so? After all, in this country we take a census every decade and it’s not followed by a plague–at least not until this year. The census took three quarters of a year and numbered one point three million men available for the army, so that meant the whole of David’s dominion was somewhat over five million men, women and children. The sin of David is pretty clear: he lost trust in God to provide whatever would be needed to protect His people. That’s out of character for David, particularly the David who wrote the psalms of trust and confidence.
David realized that he had messed up sometime between ordering the census and receiving the report. But David, the great sinner, was as usual the man of repentance, of turning back to God. And here we see David, who has been at his worst, turn to the man of faith and trust. Because when the prophet Gad offered him three options–famine, war or pestilence, he opted for the punishment that was related to the mercy of God: “let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man.”
If you do the math, you’ll see that a little over five percent of the enumerated men of Israel and Judah died, probably along with a proportionate number of women and children and elderly men. That’s a serious reduction in strength. But this is not secular history–it’s a reflection of faith. David sees the destroying angel at the threshing floor of a non-Jew, Araunah the Jebusite. He prays that God would turn the wrath away from the people and essentially wipe out his family instead. In other words, he was willing to give up the hope of a family dynasty in order to take care of his nation. Self-gift like this was not again found in a Davidic king until Our Lord on Calvary. Instead, the prophet Gad told him that a simple sacrifice at the place where the plague was halted would be adequate. David, never one to stint when it came to worship, bought the threshing floor and oxen and wood for the sacrifice for way more than the land and cattle were worth.
So this was a catastrophic epidemic, a result of sin, but with repentance and sacrifice God was able to turn the threshing floor into the altar that eventually became the center of Solomon’s temple. God’s will is always for our good, even when we are messing up and feel the effects of our rebellion.
We have now been under the boot of the Corona/China virus for five months, and most of us are still under some kind of restrictions to help slow the spread of the microbe in the U.S. population. It’s hard to see forward through the cloud of ignorance that accompanies the threat. But we can look to the past, either in the Scriptures or in our own country’s history, and discover that when we repent of our sin and cry to Our Lord, He always answers. Of course, we need to act as a nation to stop murdering children before they are born. Then we can pray together for relief, and be confident of receiving it.
