Commentaria in II Regum (II Samuelis)
Chapter Twenty-four
God, angry at the people numbered by David, offers David the choice of three punishments, namely famine, war and pestilence. David chose the pestilence; which falling killed 70 thousand. Soon, verse 17, David prays that the punishment be transferred from the people to himself, and in the threshing-floor of Areuna he sacrifices; and so reconciles God to himself and the people.
1. And the fury of the Lord was again kindled against Israel, and stirred up David among them, saying: Go, number Israel and Juda. 2. And the king said to Joab the general of his army: Go through all the tribes of Israel from Dan to Bersabee, and number ye the people, that I may know the number of them. 3. And Joab said to the king: The Lord thy God increase thy people, and multiply them a hundredfold more than they are, in the sight of my lord the king; but what meaneth my lord the king by this thing? 4. But the king’s word prevailed against the words of Joab, and of the captains of the army; and Joab and the captains of the soldiers went out from the presence of the king, to number the people of Israel. 5. And they passed over the Jordan, and came to Aroer, on the right side of the city which is in the valley of Gad; 6. And through Jazer they passed into Galaad, and into the lower land of Hodsi, and they came into the woods of Dan. And going about near Sidon, 7. They passed near the walls of Tyre, and all the land of the Hevite and the Chanaanite, and they came to the south of Juda in Bersabee; 8. And having gone through all the land, they came to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days. 9. And Joab gave the king the number of the people that he had taken, and there were found of Israel eight hundred thousand valiant men that drew the sword, and of Juda five hundred thousand fighting men. 10. But David’s heart struck him, after the people were numbered, and David said to the Lord: I have sinned exceedingly in what I have done; but I pray thee, O Lord, to take away the iniquity of thy servant, because I have done exceeding foolishly. 11. And David arose in the morning, and the word of the Lord came to the prophet Gad, David’s seer, saying: 12. Go, and speak to David: Thus saith the Lord: I give thee the choice of three things; choose one of them which thou wilt, that I may do it to thee. 13. And when Gad was come to David, he told him, saying: Either seven years of famine shall come to thee in thy land; or thou shalt flee three months before thy adversaries, and they shall pursue thee; or there shall be three days’ pestilence in thy land. Now therefore deliberate, and see what answer I shall return to him that sent me. 14. And David said to Gad: I am in a great strait; but it is better that I fall into the hands of the Lord (for his mercies are many) than into the hands of men. 15. And the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning unto the time appointed, and there died of the people from Dan to Bersabee seventy thousand men. 16. And when the angel of the Lord had stretched out his hand over Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord had pity on the affliction, and said to the angel that struck the people: It is enough; now hold thy hand: and the angel of the Lord was by the threshing-floor of Areuna the Jebusite. 17. And David said to the Lord, when he saw the angel striking the people: It is I that have sinned, I have done wickedly; these that are the sheep, what have they done? let thy hand, I pray thee, be turned against me, and against my father’s house. 18. And Gad came to David that day, and said to him: Go up, and build an altar to the Lord in the threshing-floor of Areuna the Jebusite. 19. And David went up according to the word of Gad, which the Lord had commanded him. 20. And Areuna looking, saw the king and his servants coming towards him; 21. And going out he adored the king, bowing down with his face to the ground, and said: Why is my lord the king come to his servant? And David said to him: To buy of thee the threshing-floor, and to build an altar to the Lord, that the slaughter may cease which rageth among the people. 22. And Areuna said to David: Let my lord the king take it, and offer as it pleaseth him; thou hast oxen for a holocaust, and the cart, and the yokes of the oxen for wood. 23. All these things Areuna as a king gave to the king, and Areuna said to the king: The Lord thy God receive thy vow. 24. And the king said to him: Not so as thou wilt, but I will buy it of thee at a price, and will not offer to the Lord my God holocausts free cost. So David bought the floor and the oxen for fifty sicles of silver; 25. And David built there an altar to the Lord, and offered holocausts and peace offerings; and the Lord became merciful to the land, and the plague was stayed from Israel.
1. AND THE FURY OF THE LORD WAS AGAIN KINDLED AGAINST ISRAEL.—You ask why, and for what sin of Israel? Theodoret answers, because Israel with Absalom had rebelled against David their king. But for this sin twenty thousand and more were slain, chapter 18, though perhaps this penalty did not suffice for so great a fault, nor satisfy. Secondly, Lyranus and Cajetan answer that it was the sin by which Israel conspired with Seba against David: for in this conspiracy Seba alone was punished; this chastisement was therefore reserved by God for the people. Thirdly, Abulensis thinks there were besides other sins of the people, such as are wont to rage in a commonwealth.
AND STIRRED UP DAVID AMONG THEM (to say and command Joab): GO, NUMBER ISRAEL AND JUDA.—God “stirred up” David, not of himself (for so he would have incited him to sin, which he cannot do), but by permitting the devil, prepared and panting for it, to incite David to this proud numbering of the people. God, therefore, indirectly, but the devil directly, excited David to this numbering, as is expressly said in 1 Paralipomenon 21:1: “And Satan,” it says, “rose up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel.” Yet the same is here attributed to God, to show that by the just judgment of God it came about that David was permitted to sin in numbering the people, to this end that the people might be punished. For God so holds devils and wicked men with his hand that, though they burn to do evil, they can nowhere break out, except where he has sent them to go, or himself positively permitted, for the chastisement of sins. And this positive permission of God is called action and moving, as I said in chapter 16, verse 10, where it is said that “God bade Semei curse David.”
Hence St. Gregory wisely notes, book 29 of the Morals, chapter 4, that subjects ought not to be angry with princes when they fall into any error or vice, but ascribe the cause of the fall to themselves and their sins. “He,” he says, “praised by God’s testimony, he, conscious of the heavenly mysteries, the prophet David, puffed up with the swelling of sudden elation, sinned by numbering the people; and yet the people received the vengeance, David having sinned. Why this? because, namely, the hearts of rulers are ordered according to the merit of the people. But the just judge chastised the vice of the sinner by the punishment of those for whose cause he sinned. But because he himself, being proud by his own will, was not free from guilt, he himself also received the vengeance of the guilt. For the wrath, raging, which bodily smote the people, laid low also the ruler of the people with inward grief of heart.” Whence he concludes, adding: “It is certain that the merits of rulers and of the people are so bound together that often by the fault of pastors the life of the people becomes worse, and often by the merit of the people the life of pastors is changed. But because rulers have their own judge, it is a great caution for subjects not rashly to judge the life of those who rule.” The same word for word Angelomus and Eucherius, or rather Bede, transcribed from St. Gregory. For St. Eucherius preceded St. Gregory in time, but Bede followed him.