2 Sam 23:1–7; 24 · Read 10 min · think and write 15 min
In the last lesson, Nathan said to David, “You are the man!” (2 Sam 12:7). David said, “I have sinned against the LORD” (2 Sam 12:13).
This is the last lesson on David. Scripture first records, “Now these are the last words of David” (2 Sam 23:1). Then it tells of his last fall, and of the sacrifice he offered on a threshing floor (2 Sam 24).
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.
Joab and the captains went through the whole land. After nine months and twenty days they came back to Jerusalem and gave the king the number of the people. (vv. 5–9)
10David’s heart struck him after he had counted the people. David said to the LORD, “I have sinned greatly in that which I have done. But now, the LORD, put away, I beg you, the iniquity of your servant; for I have done very foolishly.”
11When David rose up in the morning, the LORD’s word came to the prophet Gad, David’s seer, saying,
12“Go and speak to David, ‘The LORD says, “I offer you three things. Choose one of them, that I may do it to you.”’”
13So Gad came to David, and told him, saying, “Shall seven years of famine come to you in your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ pestilence in your land? Now answer, and consider what answer I shall return to him who sent me.”
14David said to Gad, “I am in distress. Let us fall now into the LORD’s hand, for his mercies are great. Let me not fall into man’s hand.”
The LORD sent a pestilence on Israel, and seventy thousand of the people died. (v. 15)
16When the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD relented of the disaster, and said to the angel who destroyed the people, “It is enough. Now withdraw your hand.” The LORD’s angel was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
17David spoke to the LORD when he saw the angel who struck the people, and said, “Behold, I have sinned, and I have done perversely; but these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand be against me, and against my father’s house.”
18Gad came that day to David and said to him, “Go up, build an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.”
19David went up according to the saying of Gad, as the LORD commanded.
20Araunah looked out, and saw the king and his servants coming on toward him. Then Araunah went out and bowed himself before the king with his face to the ground.
21Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?” David said, “To buy your threshing floor, to build an altar to the LORD, that the plague may be stopped from afflicting the people.”
22Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him. Behold, the cattle for the burnt offering, and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood.
23All this, O king, does Araunah give to the king.” Araunah said to the king, “May the LORD your God accept you.”
24The king said to Araunah, “No, but I will most certainly buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God which cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.
25David built an altar to the LORD there, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So the LORD was entreated for the land, and the plague was removed from Israel.
To read the whole chapter: 2 Samuel 24 (25 verses). David’s last words are in 2 Samuel 23:1–7.
Something the passage does not explain further. The chapter opens: “Again the LORD’s anger burned against Israel, and he moved David against them” (v. 1). Chronicles tells the same event this way: “Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to take a census of Israel” (1 Chr 21:1). Neither passage explains any further. We read both as they stand, and keep our eyes on what the passage does make clear: how David responded.
Someone warned him. Joab said to the king, “But why does my lord the king delight in this thing?” (v. 3). Then: “Notwithstanding, the king’s word prevailed against Joab and against the captains of the army” (v. 4). The passage does not say why David was so set on the count. We only see that someone warned him, and he did not listen.
His heart struck him. When the counting was done, “David’s heart struck him” (v. 10). In Lesson 6, the prophet Nathan came to him first. This time, before any prophet came, David himself said to God, “I have sinned greatly in that which I have done” (v. 10).
Into whose hand. None of the three choices was light. David gives just one reason: “Let us fall now into the LORD’s hand, for his mercies are great. Let me not fall into man’s hand” (v. 14). He had sinned, and he still ran toward God. God’s hand disciplines, and, as David says, his mercies are great.
What have these sheep done? As the plague struck the people, David prayed: “I have sinned, and I have done perversely; but these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand be against me, and against my father’s house” (v. 17). The young man who once kept sheep in the field (Lesson 1) still calls the people ‘these sheep’ in his old age, and asks God to let the blame fall on him.
An offering that costs something. Araunah was ready to give the king the threshing floor, the oxen and the wood. David said, “I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God which cost me nothing” (v. 24). He paid silver for the threshing floor, built an altar there and offered sacrifices, and “the plague was removed from Israel” (v. 25). When Chronicles tells this story, the owner of the threshing floor is called Ornan (1 Chr 21:18); later Solomon built the LORD’s house “on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite” (2 Chr 3:1).
Last words. Chapter 23 records David’s last words. He says, “The LORD’s Spirit spoke by me. His word was on my tongue” (2 Sam 23:2). Looking at his own house, he asks, “Isn’t my house so with God?” — and then rests his hope in one thing: “Yet he has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure” (2 Sam 23:5). This is the covenant God promised him in Lesson 5. In the end, David’s hope was not in how well he had done, but in the covenant God had made.
Israel saw that their king, even in old age, could still go wrong, and could still confess. The king, too, needed God’s mercy.
But the covenant God made with David is, in David’s words, “ordered in all things, and sure” (2 Sam 23:5). The king could fail. God’s covenant would not.
David’s life did not end on one long high. What he left us at the end was not ‘I did well,’ but a confession, an offering that cost him something, and the words, “Yet he has made with me an everlasting covenant” (2 Sam 23:5).
This week: Think of something you could offer to God that will cost you a little — some time, some money, or giving way to someone. Do that one thing this week.
Paul, preaching, said: “For David, after he had in his own generation served the counsel of God, fell asleep, was laid with his fathers, and saw decay” (Acts 13:36). The Old Testament also records that “David slept with his fathers, and was buried in David’s city” (1 Kgs 2:10).
Paul went on: “But he whom God raised up saw no decay” (Acts 13:37). He had already said who this is: “From this man’s offspring, God has brought salvation to Israel according to his promise” (Acts 13:23) — and he names him: God “raised up Jesus” (Acts 13:33).
In Lesson 1 we read that the New Testament’s first verse calls Jesus “the son of David” (Matt 1:1). In its last chapter, Jesus himself says, “I am the root and the offspring of David” (Rev 22:16).
Seven lessons: The Youngest, Chosen · Goliath · A Covenant of Friendship · Not Lifting a Hand · The Covenant · You Are the Man · Last Words. David’s road does not end by pointing to David. It points to the one who came from his family and is also his root.
Scripture: World English Bible.