Scripture Daily

Context No. 2290 of 4322 · 2 Samuel

Context · Reflection

2 Samuel 24:1-9: in context

1Again the LORD’s anger burned against Israel, and he moved David against them, saying, “Go, count Israel and Judah.” 2The king said to Joab the captain of the army, who was with him, “Now go back and forth through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan even to Beersheba, and count the people, that I may know the sum of the people.” 3Joab said to the king, “Now may the LORD your God add to the people, however many they may be, one hundred times; and may the eyes of my lord the king see it. But why does my lord the king delight in this thing?” 4Notwithstanding, the king’s word prevailed against Joab and against the captains of the army. Joab and the captains of the army went out from the presence of the king to count the people of Israel. 5They passed over the Jordan and encamped in Aroer, on the right side of the city that is in the middle of the valley of Gad, and to Jazer; 6then they came to Gilead and to the land of Tahtim Hodshi; and they came to Dan Jaan and around to Sidon, 7and came to the stronghold of Tyre, and to all the cities of the Hivites and of the Canaanites; and they went out to the south of Judah, at Beersheba. 8So when they had gone back and forth through all the land, they came to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days. 9Joab gave up the sum of the counting of the people to the king; and there were in Israel eight hundred thousand valiant men who drew the sword, and the men of Judah were five hundred thousand men.

David gives an order that troubles even his hardened commander Joab: go through all the tribes and count the fighting men, that I may know their number. Joab objects, asking why the king delights in this thing; but David insists, and the census is taken. There were eight hundred thousand men who drew the sword in Israel, and five hundred thousand in Judah. Though the passage does not spell out the wrong at once, the census, at root, was David's turning to trust in the size of his army, numbering his strength rather than resting in God.

The sin of the census, which Joab sensed and David later confessed, lay in what the counting represented. To number the fighting men was to measure the strength David had at his disposal, the size of his army, the extent of his resources. And beneath the counting was a turning of trust: from God, in whom David had trusted through all his rise, to the countable strength of his own forces. It was the pride and self-reliance that finds its confidence in the size of its resources, in what it can count and command, rather than in God. Joab sensed something amiss in it; and David would come to see that he had trusted in his numbers rather than in the Lord. This is a temptation that reaches into our own hearts. We are drawn to find our security and confidence in what we can count and command: our resources, our savings, our abilities, our connections, the strength we can measure. And there is a subtle turning of trust in this, from God to our own countable resources, so that our confidence rests on what we have rather than on the Lord. Like David numbering his army, we can measure our own strength and rest our security in it, rather than in God. Some trust in chariots, the psalmist says, and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God. The temptation is to trust in the countable strength rather than in God. This searches where our confidence actually rests. Do we find our security in what we can count and command, our resources and strength, measuring them and resting in them, as David rested in the number of his army? Or does our confidence rest in God? God's pleasure, the psalmist says, is not in the strength of the horse; he takes pleasure in those who fear him and hope in his mercy. God is not impressed by our countable resources, nor is our security to rest in them, but in him. This calls us to rest our confidence in God rather than in our countable resources and strength. David's census was a turning to trust in the size of his army rather than in the Lord; and we too are tempted to find our security in what we can count and command, our resources and strength, rather than in God. Let us not number our own strength and rest in it, as David numbered his army, but rest our confidence in God, in whom alone our security truly lies, trusting not in the resources we can count but in the Lord who is greater than all of them.

Do I find my security and confidence in what I can count and command, my resources, savings, abilities, and strength, measuring them and resting in them, and can David's census, a turning to trust in the size of his army rather than in the Lord, warn me of the subtle shift of trust from God to my own countable resources, moving me to rest my confidence not in what I can count but in God, in whom alone my security truly lies?

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