2 Samuel 24: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD's anger burns against Israel, and David is moved to order a census of the fighting men. Joab objects but carries it out; afterward David admits he has sinned, and the prophet Gad brings him a choice of three punishments. David chooses to fall into the LORD's hand, a plague kills seventy thousand people, and when the angel reaches Jerusalem the LORD stops it. David then buys the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, refusing to give an offering that cost him nothing, builds an altar there, and the plague stops.

Claim by Claim

1. 24:1
   • The anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel again.
   • He incited David against them.
   • The one inciting David said to him, Go, number Israel and Judah.
2. 24:2
   • The king said to Joab, the commander of the army who was with him, to go through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba.
   • The king told Joab to number the people.
   • The king said this was so that he would know the number of the people.
3. 24:3
   • Joab said to the king that the LORD his God should add to the people a hundred times as many as they were.
   • Joab said that the eyes of his lord the king should see it.
   • Joab asked why his lord the king delighted in this thing.
4. 24:4
   • The king's word prevailed against Joab and against the commanders of the army.
   • Joab and the commanders of the army went out from the presence of the king.
   • They went out to number the people of Israel.
5. 24:5
   • They crossed the Jordan.
   • They camped at Aroer.
   • Aroer is on the right side of the city that is in the middle of the valley.
   • They went toward Gad and Jazer.
   • It is unclear whether the text names the valley of Gad or a movement toward Gad.
6. 24:6
   • They came to Gilead.
   • They came to the land of Tahtim-hodshi.
   • They came to Dan-jaan.
   • They went around to Sidon.
7. 24:7
   • They came to the fortress of Tyre.
   • They came to all the cities of the Hivites and the Canaanites.
   • They went out to the Negev of Judah, to Beersheba.
8. 24:8
   • They went through all the land.
   • They came to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days.
9. 24:9
   • Joab gave the total of the numbering of the people to the king.
   • In Israel there were eight hundred thousand valiant men who drew the sword.
   • The men of Judah were five hundred thousand men.
10. 24:10
    • David's heart struck him after he had numbered the people.
    • David said to the LORD that he had sinned greatly in what he had done.
    • David asked the LORD to take away the iniquity of his servant.
    • David said he had acted very foolishly.
11. 24:11
    • David rose in the morning.
    • The word of the LORD came to Gad the prophet, David's seer.
12. 24:12
    • The LORD told Gad to go and speak to David.
    • The LORD said he was laying three things upon David.
    • The LORD told David to choose one of them.
    • The LORD said he would do the chosen thing to David.
13. 24:13
    • Gad came to David and told him.
    • Gad asked whether seven years of famine should come to David in his land.
    • Gad asked whether David would flee three months before his enemies while they pursued him.
    • Gad asked whether there should be three days of pestilence in David's land.
    • Gad told David to consider and see what answer he should return to the one who sent him.
14. 24:14
    • David said to Gad that he was in great distress.
    • David said, let us fall into the hand of the LORD.
    • David said the LORD's mercies are great.
    • David said, let me not fall into the hand of man.
15. 24:15
    • The LORD sent a pestilence upon Israel.
    • The pestilence lasted from the morning until the appointed time.
    • Seventy thousand men of the people died, from Dan to Beersheba.
16. 24:16
    • The angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it.
    • The LORD relented concerning the calamity.
    • The LORD said to the angel who was destroying the people, It is enough.
    • The LORD told the angel to stay his hand.
    • The angel of the LORD was at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
17. 24:17
    • David spoke to the LORD when he saw the angel who was striking the people.
    • David said that he himself had sinned.
    • David said that he himself had done wickedly.
    • David asked what these sheep had done.
    • David asked that the LORD's hand be against him and against his father's house.
18. 24:18
    • Gad came to David that day.
    • Gad told David to go up and raise an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
19. 24:19
    • David went up according to the word of Gad.
    • David did so as the LORD had commanded.
20. 24:20
    • Araunah looked out and saw the king and his servants coming toward him.
    • Araunah went out.
    • Araunah bowed to the king with his face to the ground.
21. 24:21
    • Araunah asked why his lord the king had come to his servant.
    • David said he had come to buy the threshing floor from Araunah.
    • David said the purpose was to build an altar to the LORD.
    • David said the purpose was that the plague be stopped from the people.
22. 24:22
    • Araunah told David that his lord the king should take and offer up what was good in his eyes.
    • Araunah pointed out the oxen for the burnt offering.
    • Araunah pointed out the threshing sledges and the implements of the oxen for the wood.
23. 24:23
    • Araunah gave all of this to the king.
    • The text calls Araunah a king, or else compares his giving to that of a king.
    • Araunah said to the king that the LORD his God should accept him.
24. 24:24
    • The king said to Araunah, No.
    • David said he would surely buy it from him at a price.
    • David said he would not offer to the LORD his God burnt offerings that cost him nothing.
    • David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.
25. 24:25
    • David built an altar to the LORD there.
    • David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.
    • The LORD was entreated for the land.
    • The plague was stopped from Israel.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

24:1

"Again" ties this chapter back to an earlier disaster in Israel, though the book does not say which. The Hebrew of the second half is deliberately compact and the subject is disputed: it can be read as "he incited David" (God) or "one incited David." The parallel account in 1 Chronicles 21:1 says instead that Satan, or an adversary, incited David. Ancient readers of both texts had the two versions side by side.

24:2

A census in the ancient Near East was not a neutral head-count. It registered men liable for military service and taxation, so it was an assertion of royal power over the tribes and a step toward a standing conscript army. "From Dan to Beersheba" was a fixed proverbial phrase meaning the entire country, end to end, the way we might say "coast to coast."

24:3

People did not say "you" to a king. They spoke about him in the third person, "my lord the king," as a sign of respect.

24:5

Aroer sat on the northern rim of the Arnon gorge, east of the Dead Sea. "The town in the middle of the valley" refers to a settlement on the floor of that ravine. Gad and Jazer were territories east of the Jordan; the census route runs up the eastern side of the country first.

24:6

"Tahtim-hodshi" is not a known place, and the Hebrew here is generally agreed to be damaged. Some ancient copies read "to the land of the Hittites, toward Kadesh." "Dan-jaan" is likewise obscure and probably means Dan, the northernmost town.

24:7

Tyre and Sidon were Phoenician port cities on the coast north of Israel, outside Israelite territory; the surveyors skirt the border. The Hivites and Canaanites were peoples living in the land before Israel, still present in pockets. The "dry southern country" translates the Negev, the arid region south of Judah.

24:8

Nine months and twenty days is a striking amount of time. The census was not a quick head count but a slow administrative march through every region, town by town.

24:9

"Men who could handle a sword" is the standard formula for men of fighting age and fitness, not the whole population. The figures are very large by ancient standards and the parallel account in 1 Chronicles 21:5 gives different numbers, 1,100,000 for Israel and 470,000 for Judah.

24:10

When David calls himself "your servant," he is saying "me." Speaking to God or to a king, people used that word instead of "I."

24:11

"Seer" was an older word for a prophet, literally one who sees. The narrator uses both terms of Gad in the same sentence, apparently to explain the older word by the newer one. A seer attached to the king served as a kind of resident royal advisor.

24:13

The Hebrew text says seven years of famine; the ancient Greek translation and 1 Chronicles 21:12 both say three, which lines up with the three months and three days that follow. Translators split over which to print, and the difference is preserved here.

24:14

"Falling into someone's hand" is a standard idiom for coming under their power. David's point is a choice between punishment administered directly by God and punishment administered through human enemies, the second of the three options.

24:15

"The set time" is ambiguous in the Hebrew. It may mean the fixed end of the three days, or the time of the daily evening sacrifice. The ancient Greek version reads "until the hour of the midday meal."

24:16

The King James "the LORD repented him of the evil" uses two words that have shifted. "Repent" here renders a Hebrew verb meaning to relent, to be moved to pity, or to change course, not to feel guilt over sin; and "evil" means harm or calamity, not wickedness. A threshing floor was a flat, hard, open area, often bare rock on a windy rise outside town, where grain was beaten and tossed to separate it from the chaff. The Jebusites were the people who held Jerusalem before David captured it, and Araunah is one of them still living there.

24:17

Calling the people "sheep" draws on the standard ancient title of a king as shepherd of his people. The Hebrew of David's opening words is difficult, and some copies can be read "I, the shepherd, have sinned," which makes the image explicit. "My father's house" means his whole family line, not just his household.

24:18

An altar was a raised platform, usually of stone, where gifts to God were burned.

24:20

Bowing with the face to the ground was the normal way to greet a king in the ancient Near East, a formal show of respect rather than an act of worship.

24:21

Buying the site rather than simply seizing it matters legally: David wants clear title to the ground before dedicating it, and the transaction is recorded in the same style as other land purchases in the Hebrew Bible.

24:22

A threshing sledge was a heavy wooden board studded underneath with stone or iron teeth, dragged over spread grain by oxen to break the husks. Wood was scarce and expensive in the region, so offering the sledges and yokes as fuel for the fire was a substantial gift, not scrap.

24:23

The King James "as a king" translates a phrase that puzzled ancient copyists too. It may mean that Araunah gave with royal generosity, or that Araunah was himself a king, and some read the word as a title of the former Jebusite ruler of Jerusalem rather than a comparison.

24:24

Silver was weighed, not coined, at this period. A shekel was a weight of roughly eleven and a half grams, so fifty shekels came to a little over a pound of silver, a real but not enormous sum. The parallel account in 1 Chronicles 21:25 gives six hundred shekels of gold for the whole site rather than fifty of silver for the floor and oxen.

24:25

A burnt offering was consumed entirely by fire on the altar, with nothing kept back. A peace offering, also called a fellowship offering, was partly burned and partly eaten in a shared meal by the worshipers, and it customarily closed an occasion rather than opening one. "The LORD was intreated" in the King James means that God let himself be appealed to and responded, not that he was pleaded with in vain.