1 CHRONICLES 19, 20, 21 and 22
What started as a kindness ended in a full-scale war. Such is the power of misunderstanding! David simply wanted to express his sympathy to the new king of the Ammonites, over the death of the previous king – all this is almost identically in 2 Samuel 10 and 1 Chronicles 19. David, just like the Lord, was a person of great kindness and generosity and these characteristics are liable to be misunderstood or misconstrued by cynical people who are unused to being shown love and concern. Jesus himself described the Father as in this way (Luke 6:35): “But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked”.
David’s envoys were treated very shamefully (half a beard is much worse than no beard!) and then the Ammonites came to their senses; anticipating swift revenge by Israel, they decided that attack was the best form of defence, and advanced upon David’s forces. The question of whether David would have taken revenge for the initial insult is therefore academic. Splitting his army into two forces, in order to match the enemy’s battle lines, David did indeed take revenge, destroying first the Aramean mercenary army, paid to fight on the Ammonite’s side, and then the Ammonites themselves. They were all forced to make peace with Israel and become Israel’s slaves.
One of the lessons from today’s reading is that you must count the cost before engaging in risky warfare; in the same way, we must count the cost of following Christ as a disciple. Salvation is certainly a free gift, but – fully adopted – it should also cost you your entire life!
1 Chronicles 20 begins with the statement that David did not accompany his armies into battle the next springtime. But it completely omits the damning story of David’s adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah the Hittite! The story simply resumes once Joab has led the army in a great victory, that David arrives just in time to get the credit for!
In Chronicles 21, we need to ask what was wrong with David counting the number of fighting men in Israel? Why did God get so angry when David took a census of his warriors? It is certainly interesting that this all happens in the context of God being angry, not with David, but with Israel – reason unknown. Perhaps it was for taking sides with Absalom against God’s anointed king. 1 Chronicles states that Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census; in 2 Samuel, God incited David. Is there a contradiction? No. We do not believe in a dualist kind of divine setup (good god verses bad god). We believe in the supreme God, the Creator of everything – even of Satan before he fell – who is in complete and sovereign control of our universe, physical and non-physical. Satan, therefore, is merely a created being who is very powerful, but no match for the Lord himself; Satan can only do anything with God’s express permission and has a restricted authority for a time on this earth. Therefore if Satan incited David, it was because the Lord allowed it and used it for his own purposes.
The reason God himself was offended was probably because it was occasioned by David’s pride and a tendency to put his trust in human military numbers, rather than in God himself. The Lord was the true King of Israel and David was anointed to rule under his authority; for David to take that particular census must have been offensive to God and an attempt to usurp God’s rule and position. Even the power-hungry, scheming Joab had the sense to question David’s judgment on this one and to realize that it would bring guilt upon the nation. The census took more than nine months!
No sooner was David’s conscience pricked than the prophet, Gad, brought a word of judgment from the Lord – giving David a choice of punishments for Israel (not for David). David chooses a completely divine punishment, reasoning that a punishment delivered by evil men would not possess the mercy that God would later show. So a great plague begins, delivered by and angel, who finally stands against Jerusalem itself awaiting God’s command to completely destroy it. God tells Gad to tell David to offer a sacrifice quickly.
Looking around for a suitable venue, David spots the piece of land that the Lord has indicated and purchases it from its owner; it is the land on Mount Moriah where much earlier Abraham offered his son Isaac, and nearby the place that, much later, God offered his Son Jesus. A precious place! David will not offer a sacrifice that cost him nothing – or else it wouldn’t be a sacrifice, would it! – and so he buys the threshing floor and everything on it and the land around it. The sacrifice is accepted, the punishment is over, and the plague is stopped.
1 Chronicles 22:1 is the ‘light bulb’ moment; it is the reason for everything that went on in the previous chapter: the newly purchased threshing floor is to become the site of the Temple of the Lord, planned by David and built by Solomon. David, the warrior, had shed too much blood, and it is highly significant that the Lord’s Temple, his earthly footstool, would be built by a man of peace. Nevertheless, David provided large amounts of the raw material for that edifice, which mirrored spiritually the foundational work that he did to prepare for the ‘golden age’ of Solomon’s reign.
The main lesson of today, I believe, is that we must learn to trust in the Lord, and not in our own resources. It is not wrong to monitor your bank account or to know how much food you have in the larder; what is wrong is to rely on these things and to store up wealth and provisions as though they will rescue you in the day of disaster. That is what God is for!
The Big Picture 