“And again the anger of Jehovah was kindled against Israel, and He
moved David against them saying, Go, number Israel and Judah.”—2
SAM. xxiv. 1.
“And Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number
Israel.”—1 CHRON. xxi. 1.
“Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God
cannot be tempted with evil, and He Himself tempteth no man: but
each man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and
enticed.”—JAMES i, 13, 14.
The census of David is found both in the book of Samuel and in Chronicles,
in very much the same form; but the chronicler has made a number of small
but important alterations and additions. Taken together, these changes
involve a new interpretation of the history, and bring out lessons that
cannot so easily be deduced from the narrative in the book of Samuel.
Hence it is necessary to give a separate exposition of the narrative in
Chronicles.
As before, we will first review the alterations made by the chronicler and
then expound the narrative in the form in which it left his hand, or
rather in the form in which it stands in the Masoretic text. Any attempt
to deal with the peculiarly complicated problem of the textual criticism
of Chronicles would be out of place here. Probably there are no
corruptions of the text that would appreciably affect the general
exposition of this chapter.
At the very outset the chronicler substitutes Satan for Jehovah, and thus
changes the whole significance of the narrative. This point is too
important to be dealt with casually, and must be reserved for special
consideration later on. In ver. 2 there is a slight change that marks the
different points of the views of the Chronicler and the author of the
narrative in the book of Samuel. The latter had written that Joab numbered
the people from Dan to Beersheba, a merely conventional phrase indicating
the extent of the census. It might possibly, however, have been taken to
denote that the census began in the north and was concluded in the south.
To the chronicler, whose interests all centred in Judah, such an
arrangement seemed absurd; and he carefully guarded against any mistake by
altering “Dan to Beersheba” into “Beersheba to Dan.” In ver. 3 the
substance of Joab’s words is not altered, but various slight touches are
added to bring out more clearly and forcibly what is implied in the book
of Samuel. Joab had spoken of the census as being the king’s
pleasure.(312) It was scarcely appropriate to speak of David “taking
pleasure in” a suggestion of Satan. In Chronicles Joab’s words are less
forcible, “Why doth my lord require this thing?” Again, in the book of
Samuel Joab protests against the census without assigning any reason. The
context, it is true, readily supplies one; but in Chronicles all is made
clear by the addition, “Why will he” (David) “be a cause of guilt unto
Israel?” Further on the chronicler’s special interest in Judah again
betrays itself. The book of Samuel described, with some detail, the
progress of the enumerators through Eastern and Northern Palestine by way
of Beersheba to Jerusalem. Chronicles having already made them start from
Beersheba, omits these details.
In ver. 5 the numbers in Chronicles differ not only from those of the
older narrative, but also from the chronicler’s own statistics in chap.
xxvii. In this last account the men of war are divided into twelve courses
of twenty-four thousand each, making a total of two hundred and
eighty-eight thousand; in the book of Samuel Israel numbers eight hundred
thousand, and Judah five hundred thousand; but in our passage Israel is
increased to eleven hundred thousand, and Judah is reduced to four hundred
and seventy thousand. Possibly the statistics in chap. xxvii. are not
intended to include all the fighting men, otherwise the figures cannot be
harmonised. The discrepancy between our passage and the book of Samuel is
perhaps partly explained by the following verse, which is an addition of
the chronicler. In the book of Samuel the census is completed, but our
additional verse states that Levi and Benjamin were not included in the
census. The chronicler understood that the five hundred thousand assigned
to Judah in the older narrative were the joint total of Judah and
Benjamin; he accordingly reduced the total by thirty thousand, because,
according to his view, Benjamin was omitted from the census. The increase
in the number of the Israelites is unexpected. The chronicler does not
usually overrate the northern tribes. Later on Jeroboam, eighteen years
after the disruption, takes the field against Abijah with “eight hundred
thousand chosen men,” a phrase that implies a still larger number of
fighting men, if all had been mustered. Obviously the rebel king would not
be expected to be able to bring into the field as large a force as the
entire strength of Israel in the most flourishing days of David. The
chronicler’s figures in these two passages are consistent, but the
comparison is not an adequate reason for the alteration in the present
chapter. Textual corruption is always a possibility in case of numbers,
but on the whole this particular change does not admit of a satisfactory
explanation.
In ver. 7 we have a very striking alteration. According to the book of
Samuel, David’s repentance was entirely spontaneous: “David’s heart smote
him after that he had numbered the people”(313); but here God smites
Israel, and then David’s conscience awakes. In ver. 12 the chronicler
makes a slight addition, apparently to gratify his literary taste. In the
original narrative the third alternative offered to David had been
described simply as “the pestilence,” but in Chronicles the words “the
sword of Jehovah” are added in antithesis to “the sword of Thine enemies”
in the previous verse.
Ver. 16, which describes David’s vision of the angel with the drawn sword,
is an expansion of the simple statement of the book of Samuel that David
saw the angel. In ver. 18 we are not merely told that Gad spake to David,
but that he spake by the command of the angel of Jehovah. Ver. 20, which
tells us how Ornan saw the angel, is an addition of the chronicler’s. All
these changes lay stress upon the intervention of the angel, and
illustrate the interest taken by Judaism in the ministry of angels.
Zechariah, the prophet of the Restoration, received his messages by the
dispensation of angels; and the title of the last canonical prophet,
Malachi, probably means “the Angel.” The change from Araunah to Ornan is a
mere question of spelling. Possibly Ornan is a somewhat Hebraised form of
the older Jebusite name Araunah.
In ver. 22 the reference to “a full price” and other changes in the form
of David’s words are probably due to the influence of Gen. xxiii. 9. In
ver. 23 the chronicler’s familiarity with the ritual of sacrifice has led
him to insert a reference to a meal offering, to accompany the burnt
offering. Later on the chronicler omits the somewhat ambiguous words which
seem to speak of Araunah as a king. He would naturally avoid anything like
a recognition of the royal status of a Jebusite prince.
In ver. 25 David pays much more dearly for Ornan’s threshing-floor than in
the book of Samuel. In the latter the price is fifty shekels of silver, in
the former six hundred shekels of gold. Most ingenious attempts have been
made to harmonise the two statements. It has been suggested that fifty
shekels of silver means silver to the value of fifty shekels of gold and
paid in gold, and that six hundred shekels of gold means the value of six
hundred shekels of silver paid in gold. A more lucid but equally
impossible explanation is that David paid fifty shekels for every tribe,
six hundred in all.(314) The real reason for the change is that when the
Temple became supremely important to the Jews the small price of fifty
shekels for the site seemed derogatory to the dignity of the sanctuary;
six hundred shekels of gold was a more appropriate sum. Abraham had paid
four hundred shekels for a burying-place; and a site for the Temple, where
Jehovah had chosen to put His name, must surely have cost more. The
chronicler followed the tradition which had grown up under the influence
of this feeling.
Chaps. xxi. 27-xxii. 1 are an addition. According to the Levitical law,
David was falling into grievous sin in sacrificing anywhere except before
the Mosaic altar of burnt offering. The chronicler therefore states the
special circumstances that palliated this offence against the exclusive
privileges of the one sanctuary of Jehovah. He also reminds us that this
threshing-floor became the site of the altar of burnt offering for
Solomon’s temple. Here he probably follows an ancient and historical
tradition; the prominence given to the threshing-floor in the book of
Samuel indicates the special sanctity of the site. The Temple is the only
sanctuary whose site could be thus connected with the last days of David.
When the book of Samuel was written, the facts were too familiar to need
any explanation; every one knew that the Temple stood on the site of
Araunah’s threshing-floor. The chronicler, writing centuries later, felt
it necessary to make an explicit statement on the subject.
Having thus attempted to understand how our narrative assumed its present
form, we will now tell the chronicler’s story of these incidents. The long
reign of David was drawing to a close. Hitherto he had been blessed with
uninterrupted prosperity and success. His armies had been victorious over
all the enemies of Israel, the borders of the land of Jehovah had been
extended, David himself was lodged with princely splendour, and the
services of the Ark were conducted with imposing ritual by a numerous
array of priests and Levites. King and people alike were at the zenith of
their glory. In worldly prosperity and careful attention to religious
observances David and his people were not surpassed by Job himself.
Apparently their prosperity provoked the envious malice of an evil and
mysterious being, who appears only here in Chronicles: Satan, the
persecutor of Job. The trial to which he subjected the loyalty of David
was more subtle and suggestive than his assault upon Job. He harassed Job
as the wind dealt with the traveller in the fable, and Job only wrapped
the cloak of his faith closer about him; Satan allowed David to remain in
the full sunshine of prosperity, and seduced him into sin by fostering his
pride in being the powerful and victorious prince of a mighty people. He
suggested a census. David’s pride would be gratified by obtaining accurate
information as to the myriads of his subjects. Such statistics would be
useful for the civil organisation of Israel; the king would learn where
and how to recruit his army or to find an opportunity to impose additional
taxation. The temptation appealed alike to the king, the soldier, and the
statesman, and did not appeal in vain. David at once instructed Joab and
the princes to proceed with the enumeration; Joab demurred and protested:
the census would be a cause of guilt unto Israel. But not even the great
influence of the commander-in-chief could turn the king from his purpose.
His word prevailed against Joab, wherefore Joab departed, and went
throughout all Israel, and came to Jerusalem. This brief general statement
indicates a long and laborious task, simplified and facilitated in some
measure by the primitive organisation of society and by rough and ready
methods adopted to secure the very moderate degree of accuracy with which
an ancient Eastern sovereign would be contented. When Xerxes wished to
ascertain the number of the vast army with which he set out to invade
Greece, his officers packed ten thousand men into as small a space as
possible and built a wall round them; then they turned them out, and
packed the space again and again; and so in time they ascertained how many
tens of thousands of men there were in the army. Joab’s methods would be
different, but perhaps not much more exact. He would probably learn from
the “heads of fathers’ houses” the number of fighting men in each family.
Where the hereditary chiefs of a district were indifferent, he might make
some rough estimate of his own. We may be sure that both Joab and the
local authorities would be careful to err on the safe side. The king was
anxious to learn that he possessed a large number of subjects. Probably as
the officers of Xerxes went on with their counting they omitted to pack
the measured area as closely as they did at first; they might allow eight
or nine thousand to pass for ten thousand. Similarly David’s servants
would, to say the least, be anxious not to underestimate the number of his
subjects. The work apparently went on smoothly; nothing is said that
indicates any popular objection or resistance to the census; the process
of enumeration was not interrupted by any token of Divine displeasure
against the “cause of guilt unto Israel.” Nevertheless Joab’s misgivings
were not set at rest; he did what he could to limit the range of the
census and to withdraw at least two of the tribes from the impending
outbreak of Divine wrath. The tribe of Levi would be exempt from taxation
and the obligation of military service; Joab could omit them without
rendering his statistics less useful for military and financial purposes.
In not including the Levites in the general census of Israel, Joab was
following the precedent set by the numbering in the wilderness.
Benjamin was probably omitted in order to protect the Holy City, the
chronicler following that form of the ancient tradition which assigned
Jerusalem to Benjamin.(315) Later on,(316) however, the chronicler seems
to imply that these two tribes left to the last were not numbered because
of the growing dissatisfaction of Joab with his task: “Joab the son of
Zeruiah began to number, but finished not.” But these different reasons
for the omission of Levi and Benjamin do not mutually exclude each other.
Another limitation is also stated in the later reference: “David took not
the number of them twenty years old and under, because Jehovah had said
that He would increase Israel like to the stars of heaven.” This statement
and explanation seems a little superfluous; the census was specially
concerned with the fighting men, and in the book of Numbers only those
over twenty are numbered. But we have seen elsewhere that the chronicler
has no great confidence in the intelligence of his readers, and feels
bound to state definitely matters that have only been implied and might be
overlooked. Here, therefore, he calls our attention to the fact that the
numbers previously given do not comprise the whole male population, but
only the adults.
At last the census, so far as it was carried out at all, was finished, and
the results were presented to the king. They are meagre and bald compared
to the volumes of tables which form the report of a modern census. Only
two divisions of the country are recognised: “Judah” and “Israel,” or the
ten tribes. The total is given for each: eleven hundred thousand for
Israel, four hundred and seventy thousand for Judah, in all fifteen
hundred and seventy thousand. Whatever details may have been given to the
king, he would be chiefly interested in the grand total. Its figures would
be the most striking symbol of the extent of his authority and the glory
of his kingdom.
Perhaps during the months occupied in taking the census David had
forgotten the ineffectual protests of Joab, and was able to receive his
report without any presentiment of coming evil. Even if his mind were not
altogether at ease, all misgivings would for the time be forgotten. He
probably made or had made for him some rough calculation as to the total
of men, women, and children that would correspond to the vast array of
fighting men. His servants would not reckon the entire population at less
than nine or ten millions. His heart would be uplifted with pride as he
contemplated the statement of the multitudes that were the subjects of his
crown and prepared to fight at his bidding. The numbers are moderate
compared with the vast populations and enormous armies of the great powers
of modern Europe; they were far surpassed by the Roman empire and the
teeming populations of the valleys of the Nile, the Euphrates, and the
Tigris; but during the Middle Ages it was not often possible to find in
Western Europe so large a population under one government or so numerous
an army under one banner. The resources of Cyrus may not have been greater
when he started on his career of conquest; and when Xerxes gathered into
one motley horde the warriors of half the known world, their total was
only about double the number of David’s robust and warlike Israelites.
There was no enterprise that was likely to present itself to his
imagination that he might not have undertaken with a reasonable
probability of success. He must have regretted that his days of warfare
were past, and that the unwarlike Solomon, occupied with more peaceful
tasks, would allow this magnificent instrument of possible conquests to
rust unused.
But the king was not long left in undisturbed enjoyment of his greatness.
In the very moment of his exaltation, some sense of the Divine displeasure
fell upon him.(317) Mankind has learnt by a long and sad experience to
distrust its own happiness. The brightest hours have come to possess a
suggestion of possible catastrophe, and classic story loved to tell of the
unavailing efforts of fortunate princes to avoid their inevitable
downfall. Polycrates and Crœsus, however, had not tempted the Divine anger
by ostentatious pride; David’s power and glory had made him neglectful of
the reverent homage due to Jehovah, and he had sinned in spite of the
express warnings of his most trusted minister.
When the revulsion of feeling came, it was complete. The king at once
humbled himself under the mighty hand of God, and made full acknowledgment
of his sin and folly: “I have sinned greatly in that I have done this
thing: but now put away, I beseech Thee, the iniquity of Thy servant, for
I have done very foolishly.”
The narrative continues as in the book of Samuel. Repentance could not
avert punishment, and the punishment struck directly at David’s pride of
power and glory. The great population was to be decimated either by
famine, war, or pestilence. The king chose to suffer from the pestilence,
“the sword of Jehovah”: “Let me fall now into the hand of Jehovah, for
very great are His mercies; and let me not fall into the hand of man. So
Jehovah sent a pestilence upon Israel, and there fell of Israel seventy
thousand men.” Not three days since Joab handed in his report, and already
a deduction of seventy thousand would have to be made from its total; and
still the pestilence was not checked, for “God sent an angel unto
Jerusalem to destroy it.” If, as we have supposed, Joab had withheld
Jerusalem from the census, his pious caution was now rewarded: “Jehovah
repented Him of the evil, and said to the destroying angel, It is enough;
now stay thine hand.” At the very last moment the crowning catastrophe was
averted. In the Divine counsels Jerusalem was already delivered, but to
human eyes its fate still trembled in the balance: “And David lifted up
his eyes, and saw the angel of Jehovah stand between the earth and the
heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem.” So
another great Israelite soldier lifted up his eyes beside Jericho and
beheld the captain of the host of Jehovah standing over against him with
his sword drawn in his hand.(318) Then the sword was drawn to smite the
enemies of Israel, but now it was turned to smite Israel itself. David and
his elders fell upon their faces as Joshua had done before them: “And
David said unto God, Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered?
even I it is that have sinned and done very wickedly; but these sheep,
what have they done? Let Thine hand, I pray Thee, O Jehovah my God, be
against me and against my father’s house, but not against Thy people, that
they should be plagued.”
The awful presence returned no answer to the guilty king, but addressed
itself to the prophet Gad, and commanded _him_ to bid David go up and
build an altar to Jehovah in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
The command was a message of mercy. Jehovah permitted David to build Him
an altar; He was prepared to accept an offering at his hands. The king’s
prayers were heard, and Jerusalem was saved from the pestilence. But still
the angel stretched out his drawn sword over Jerusalem; he waited till the
reconciliation of Jehovah with His people should have been duly ratified
by solemn sacrifices. At the bidding of the prophet, David went up to the
threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite. Sorrow and reassurance, hope and
fear, contended for the mastery. No sacrifice could call back to life the
seventy thousand victims whom the pestilence had already destroyed, and
yet the horror of its ravages was almost forgotten in relief at the
deliverance of Jerusalem from the calamity that had all but overtaken it.
Even now the uplifted sword might be only back for a time; Satan might yet
bring about some heedless and sinful act, and the respite might end not in
pardon, but in the execution of God’s purpose of vengeance. Saul had been
condemned because he sacrificed too soon; now perhaps delay would be
fatal. Uzzah had been smitten because he touched the Ark; till the
sacrifice was actually offered who could tell whether some thoughtless
blunder would not again provoke the wrath of Jehovah? Under ordinary
circumstances David would not have dared to sacrifice anywhere except upon
the altar of burnt offering before the tabernacle at Gibeon; he would have
used the ministry of priests and Levites. But ritual is helpless in great
emergencies. The angel of Jehovah with the drawn sword seemed to bar the
way to Gibeon, as once before he had barred Balaam’s progress when he came
to curse Israel. In his supreme need David builds his own altar and offers
his own sacrifices; he receives the Divine answer without the intervention
this time of either priest or prophet. By God’s most merciful and
mysterious grace, David’s guilt and punishment, his repentance and pardon,
broke down all barriers between himself and God.
But, as he went up to the threshing-floor, he was still troubled and
anxious. The burden was partly lifted from his heart, but he still craved
full assurance of pardon. The menacing attitude of the destroying angel
seemed to hold out little promise of mercy and forgiveness, and yet the
command to sacrifice would be cruel mockery if Jehovah did not intend to
be gracious to His people and His anointed.
At the threshing-floor Ornan and his four sons were threshing wheat,
apparently unmoved by the prospect of the threatened pestilence. In Egypt
the Israelites were protected from the plagues with which their oppressors
were punished. Possibly now the situation was reversed, and the remnant of
the Canaanites in Palestine were not afflicted by the pestilence that fell
upon Israel. But Ornan turned back and saw the angel; he may not have
known the grim mission with which the Lord’s messenger had been entrusted,
but the aspect of the destroyer, his threatening attitude, and the lurid
radiance of his unsheathed and outstretched sword must have seemed
unmistakable tokens of coming calamity. Whatever might be threatened for
the future, the actual appearance of this supernatural visitant was enough
to unnerve the stoutest heart; and Ornan’s four sons hid themselves.
Before long, however, Ornan’s terrors were somewhat relieved by the
approach of less formidable visitors. The king and his followers had
ventured to show themselves openly, in spite of the destroying angel; and
they had ventured with impunity. Ornan went forth and bowed himself to
David with his face to the ground. In ancient days the father of the
faithful, oppressed by the burden of his bereavement, went to the Hittites
to purchase a burying-place for his wife. Now the last of the Patriarchs,
mourning for the sufferings of his people, came by Divine command to the
Jebusite to purchase the ground on which to offer sacrifices, that the
plague might be stayed from the people. The form of bargaining was
somewhat similar in both cases. We are told that bargains are concluded in
much the same fashion to-day. Abraham had paid four hundred shekels of
silver for the field of Ephron in Machpelah, “with the cave which was
therein, and all the trees that were in the field.” The price of Ornan’s
threshing-floor was in proportion to the dignity and wealth of the royal
purchaser and the sacred purpose for which it was designed. The fortunate
Jebusite received no less than six hundred shekels of gold.
David built his altar, and offered up his sacrifices and prayers to
Jehovah. Then, in answer to David’s prayers, as later in answer to
Solomon’s, fire fell from heaven upon the altar of burnt offering, and all
this while the sword of Jehovah flamed across the heavens above Jerusalem,
and the destroying angel remained passive, but to all appearances
unappeased. But as the fire of God fell from heaven, Jehovah gave yet
another final and convincing token that He would no longer execute
judgment against His people. In spite of all that had happened to reassure
them, the spectators must have been thrilled with alarm when they saw that
the angel of Jehovah no longer remained stationary, and that his flaming
sword was moving through the heavens. Their renewed terror was only for a
moment: “the angel put up his sword again into the sheath thereof,” and
the people breathed more freely when they saw the instrument of Jehovah’s
wrath vanish out of their sight.
The use of Machpelah as a patriarchal burying-place led to the
establishment of a sanctuary at Hebron, which continued to be the seat of
a debased and degenerate worship even after the coming of Christ. It is
even now a Mohammedan holy place. But on the threshing-floor of Ornan the
Jebusite there was to arise a more worthy memorial of the mercy and
judgment of Jehovah. Without the aid of priestly oracle or prophetic
utterance, David was led by the Spirit of the Lord to discern the
significance of the command to perform an irregular sacrifice in a
hitherto unconsecrated place. When the sword of the destroying angel
interposed between David and the Mosaic tabernacle and altar of Gibeon,
the way was not merely barred against the king and his court on one
exceptional occasion. The incidents of this crisis symbolised the cutting
off for ever of the worship of Israel from its ancient shrine and the
transference of the Divinely appointed centre of the worship of Jehovah to
the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite, that is to say to Jerusalem,
the city of David and the capital of Judah.
The lessons of this incident, so far as the chronicler has simply borrowed
from his authority, belong to the exposition of the book of Samuel. The
main features peculiar to Chronicles are the introduction of the evil
angel Satan, together with the greater prominence given to the angel of
Jehovah, and the express statement that the scene of David’s sacrifice
became the site of Solomon’s altar of burnt offering.
The stress laid upon angelic agency is characteristic of later Jewish
literature, and is especially marked in Zechariah and Daniel. It was no
doubt partly due to the influence of the Persian religion, but it was also
a development from the primitive faith of Israel, and the development was
favoured by the course of Jewish history. The Captivity and the
Restoration, with the events that preceded and accompanied these
revolutions, enlarged the Jewish experience of nature and man. The
captives in Babylon and the fugitives in Egypt saw that the world was
larger than they had imagined. In Josiah’s reign the Scythians from the
far North swept over Western Asia, and the Medes and Persians broke in
upon Assyria and Chaldæa from the remote East. The prophets claimed
Scythians, Medes, and Persians as the instruments of Jehovah. The Jewish
appreciation of the majesty of Jehovah, the Maker and Ruler of the world,
increased as they learnt more of the world He had made and ruled; but the
invasion of a remote and unknown people impressed them with the idea of
infinite dominion and unlimited resources, beyond all knowledge and
experience. The course of Israelite history between David and Ezra
involved as great a widening of man’s ideas of the universe as the
discovery of America or the establishment of Copernican astronomy. A
Scythian invasion was scarcely less portentous to the Jews than the
descent of an irresistible army from the planet Jupiter would be to the
civilised nations of the nineteenth century. The Jew began to shrink from
intimate and familiar fellowship with so mighty and mysterious a Deity. He
felt the need of a mediator, some less exalted being, to stand between
himself and God. For the ordinary purposes of everyday life the Temple,
with its ritual and priesthood, provided a mediation; but for unforeseen
contingencies and exceptional crises the Jews welcomed the belief that a
ministry of angels provided a safe means of intercourse between himself
and the Almighty. Many men have come to feel to-day that the discoveries
of science have made the universe so infinite and marvellous that its
Maker and Governor is exalted beyond human approach. The infinite spaces
of the constellations seem to intervene between the earth and the
presence-chamber of God; its doors are guarded against prayer and faith by
inexorable laws; the awful Being, who dwells within, has become
“unmeasured in height, undistinguished into form.” Intellect and
imagination alike fail to combine the manifold and terrible attributes of
the Author of nature into the picture of a loving Father. It is no new
experience, and the present century faces the situation very much as did
the chronicler’s contemporaries. Some are happy enough to rest in the
mediation of ritual priests; others are content to recognise, as of old,
powers and forces, not now, however, personal messengers of Jehovah, but
the physical agencies of “that which makes for righteousness.” Christ came
to supersede the Mosaic ritual and the ministry of angels; He will come
again to bring those who are far off into renewed fellowship with His
Father and theirs.
On the other hand, the recognition of Satan, the evil angel, marks an
equally great change from the theology of the book of Samuel. The
primitive Israelite religion had not yet reached the stage at which the
origin and existence of moral evil became an urgent problem of religious
thought; men had not yet realised the logical consequences of the doctrine
of Divine unity and omnipotence. Not only was material evil traced to
Jehovah as the expression of His just wrath against sin, but “morally
pernicious acts were quite frankly ascribed to the direct agency of
God.”(319) God hardens the heart of Pharaoh and the Canaanites; Saul is
instigated by an evil spirit from Jehovah to make an attempt upon the life
of David; Jehovah moves David to number Israel; He sends forth a lying
spirit that Ahab’s prophets may prophesy falsely and entice him to his
ruin.(320) The Divine origin of moral evil implied in these passages is
definitely stated in the book of Proverbs: “Jehovah hath made everything
for its own end, yea even the wicked for the day of evil”; in
Lamentations, “Out of the mouth of the Most High cometh there not evil and
good?” and in the book of Isaiah, “I form the light, and create darkness;
I make peace, and create evil; I am Jehovah, that doeth all these
things.”(321)
The ultra-Calvinism, so to speak, of earlier Israelite religion was only
possible so long as its full significance was not understood. An emphatic
assertion of the absolute sovereignty of the one God was necessary as a
protest against polytheism, and later on against dualism as well. For
practical purposes men’s faith needed to be protected by the assurance
that God worked out His purposes in and through human wickedness. The
earlier attitude of the Old Testament towards moral evil had a distinct
practical and theological value.
But the conscience of Israel could not always rest in this view of the
origin of evil. As the standard of morality was raised, and its
obligations were more fully insisted on, as men shrank from causing evil
themselves and from the use of deceit and violence, they hesitated more
and more to ascribe to Jehovah what they sought to avoid themselves. And
yet no easy way of escape presented itself. The facts remained; the
temptation to do evil was part of the punishment of the sinner and of the
discipline of the saint. It was impossible to deny that sin had its place
in God’s government of the world; and in view of men’s growing reverence
and moral sensitiveness, it was becoming almost equally impossible to
admit without qualification or explanation that God was Himself the Author
of evil. Jewish thought found itself face to face with the dilemma against
which the human intellect vainly beats its wings, like a bird against the
bars of its cage.
However, even in the older literature there were suggestions, not indeed
of a solution of the problem, but of a less objectionable way of stating
facts. In Eden the temptation to evil comes from the serpent; and, as the
story is told, the serpent is quite independent of God; and the question
of any Divine authority or permission for its action is not in any way
dealt with. It is true that the serpent was one of the beasts of the field
which the Lord God had made, but the narrator probably did not consider
the question of any Divine responsibility for its wickedness. Again, when
Ahab is enticed to his ruin, Jehovah does not act directly, but through
the twofold agency first of the lying spirit and then of the deluded
prophets. This tendency to dissociate God from any direct agency of evil
is further illustrated in Job and Zechariah. When Job is to be tried and
tempted, the actual agent is the malevolent Satan; and the same evil
spirit stands forth to accuse the high-priest Joshua(322) as the
representative of Israel. The development of the idea of angelic agency
afforded new resources for the reverent exposition of the facts connected
with the origin and existence of moral evil. If a sense of Divine majesty
led to a recognition of the angel of Jehovah as the Mediator of
revelation, the reverence for Divine holiness imperatively demanded that
the immediate causation of evil should also be associated with angelic
agency. This agent of evil receives the name of Satan, the adversary of
man, the _advocatus diaboli_ who seeks to discredit man before God, the
impeacher of Job’s loyalty and of Joshua’s purity. Yet Jehovah does not
resign any of His omnipotence. In Job Satan cannot act without God’s
permission; he is strictly limited by Divine control: all that he does
only illustrates Divine wisdom and effects the Divine purpose. In
Zechariah there is no refutation of the charge brought by Satan; its truth
is virtually admitted: nevertheless Satan is rebuked for his attempt to
hinder God’s gracious purposes towards His people. Thus later Jewish
thought left the ultimate Divine sovereignty untouched, but attributed the
actual and direct causation of moral evil to malign spiritual agency.
Trained in this school, the chronicler must have read with something of a
shock that Jehovah moved David to commit the sin of numbering Israel. He
was familiar with the idea that in such matters Jehovah used or permitted
the activity of Satan. Accordingly he carefully avoids reproducing any
words from the book of Samuel that imply a direct Divine temptation of
David, and ascribes it to the well-known and crafty animosity of Satan
against Israel. In so doing, he has gone somewhat further than his
predecessors: he is not careful to emphasise any Divine permission given
to Satan or Divine control exercised over him. The subsequent narrative
implies an overruling for good, and the chronicler may have expected his
readers to understand that Satan here stood in the same relation to God as
in Job and Zechariah; but the abrupt and isolated introduction of Satan to
bring about the fall of David invests the arch-enemy with a new and more
independent dignity.
The progress of the Jews in moral and spiritual life had given them a
keener appreciation both of good and evil, and of the contrast and
opposition between them. Over against the pictures of the good kings, and
of the angel of the Lord, the generation of the chronicler set the
complementary pictures of the wicked kings and the evil angel. They had a
higher ideal to strive after, a clearer vision of the kingdom of God; they
also saw more vividly the depths of Satan and recoiled with horror from
the abyss revealed to them.
Our text affords a striking illustration of the tendency to emphasise the
recognition of Satan as the instrument of evil and to ignore the question
of the relation of God to the origin of evil. Possibly no more practical
attitude can be assumed towards this difficult question. The absolute
relation of evil to the Divine sovereignty is one of the problems of the
ultimate nature of God and man. Its discussion may throw many sidelights
upon other subjects, and will always serve the edifying and necessary
purpose of teaching men the limitations of their intellectual powers.
Otherwise theologians have found such controversies barren, and the
average Christian has not been able to derive from them any suitable
nourishment for his spiritual life. Higher intelligences than our own, we
have been told,—
“... reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.”
On the other hand, it is supremely important that the believer should
clearly understand the reality of temptation as an evil spiritual force
opposed to Divine grace. Sometimes this power of Satan will show itself as
“the alien law in his members, warring against the law of his mind and
bringing him into captivity under the law of sin, which is in his
members.” He will be conscious that “he is drawn away by his own lust and
enticed.” But sometimes temptation will rather come from the outside. A
man will find his “adversary” in circumstances, in evil companions, in
“the sight of means to do ill deeds”; the serpent whispers in his ear, and
Satan moves him to wrong-doing. Let him not imagine for a moment that he
is delivered over to the powers of evil; let him realise clearly that with
every temptation God provides a way of escape. Every man knows in his own
conscience that speculative difficulties can neither destroy the sanctity
of moral obligation nor hinder the operation of the grace of God.
Indeed, the chronicler is at one with the books of Job and Zechariah in
showing us the malice of Satan overruled for man’s good and God’s glory.
In Job the affliction of the Patriarch only serves to bring out his faith
and devotion, and is eventually rewarded by renewed and increased
prosperity; in Zechariah the protest of Satan against God’s gracious
purposes for Israel is made the occasion of a singular display of God’s
favour towards His people and their priest. In Chronicles the malicious
intervention of Satan leads up to the building of the Temple.
Long ago Jehovah had promised to choose a place in Israel wherein to set
His name; but, as the chronicler read in the history of his nation, the
Israelites dwelt for centuries in Palestine, and Jehovah made no sign: the
ark of God still dwelt in curtains. Those who still looked for the
fulfilment of this ancient promise must often have wondered by what
prophetic utterance or vision Jehovah would make known His choice. Bethel
had been consecrated by the vision of Jacob, when he was a solitary
fugitive from Esau, paying the penalty of his selfish craft; but the
lessons of past history are not often applied practically, and probably no
one ever expected that Jehovah’s choice of the site for His one temple
would be made known to His chosen king, the first true Messiah of Israel,
in a moment of even deeper humiliation than Jacob’s, or that the Divine
announcement would be the climax of a series of events initiated by the
successful machinations of Satan.
Yet herein lies one of the main lessons of the incident. Satan’s
machinations are not really successful; he often attains his immediate
object, but is always defeated in the end. He estranges David from Jehovah
for a moment, but eventually Jehovah and His people are drawn into closer
union, and their reconciliation is sealed by the long-expected choice of a
site for the Temple. Jehovah is like a great general, who will sometimes
allow the enemy to obtain a temporary advantage, in order to overwhelm him
in some crushing defeat. The eternal purpose of God moves onward,
unresting and unhasting; its quiet and irresistible persistence finds
special opportunity in the hindrances that seem sometimes to check its
progress. In David’s case a few months showed the whole process complete:
the malice of the Enemy; the sin and punishment of his unhappy victim; the
Divine relenting and its solemn symbol in the newly consecrated altar. But
with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one
day; and this brief episode in the history of a small people is a symbol
alike of the eternal dealings of God in His government of the universe and
of His personal care for the individual soul. How short-lived has been the
victory of sin in many souls! Sin is triumphant; the tempter seems to have
it all his own way, but his first successes only lead to his final rout;
the devil is cast out by the Divine exorcism of chastisement and
forgiveness; and he learns that his efforts have been made to subserve the
training in the Christian warfare of such warriors as Augustine and John
Bunyan. Or, to take a case more parallel to that of David, Satan catches
the saint unawares, and entraps him into sin; and, behold, while the evil
one is in the first flush of triumph, his victim is back again at the
throne of grace in an agony of contrition, and before long the repentant
sinner is bowed down into a new humility at the undeserved graciousness of
the Divine pardon: the chains of love are riveted with a fuller constraint
about his soul, and he is tenfold more the child of God than before.
And in the larger life of the Church and the world Satan’s triumphs are
still the heralds of his utter defeat. He prompted the Jews to slay
Stephen; and the Church were scattered abroad, and went about preaching
the word; and the young man at whose feet the witnesses laid down their
garments became the Apostle of the Gentiles. He tricked the reluctant
Diocletian into ordering the greatest of the persecutions, and in a few
years Christianity was an established religion in the empire. In more
secular matters the apparent triumph of an evil principle is usually the
signal for its downfall. In America the slave-holders of the Southern
States rode rough-shod over the Northerners for more than a generation,
and then came the Civil War.
These are not isolated instances, and they serve to warn us against undue
depression and despondency when for a season God seems to refrain from any
intervention with some of the evils of the world. We are apt to ask in our
impatience,—
“Is there not wrong too bitter for atoning?
What are these desperate and hideous years?
Hast Thou not heard Thy whole creation groaning,
Sighs of the bondsman, and a woman’s tears?”
The works of Satan are as earthly as they are devilish; they belong to the
world; which passeth away, with the lust thereof: but the gracious
providence of God has all infinity and all eternity to work in. Where
to-day we can see nothing but the destroying angel with his flaming sword,
future generations shall behold the temple of the Lord.
David’s sin, and penitence, and pardon were no inappropriate preludes to
this consecration of Mount Moriah. The Temple was not built for the use of
blameless saints, but the worship of ordinary men and women. Israel
through countless generations was to bring the burden of its sins to the
altar of Jehovah. The sacred splendour of Solomon’s dedication festival
duly represented the national dignity of Israel and the majesty of the God
of Jacob; but the self-abandonment of David’s repentance, the deliverance
of Jerusalem from impending pestilence, the Divine pardon of presumptuous
sin, constituted a still more solemn inauguration of the place where
Jehovah had chosen to set His name. The sinner, seeking the assurance of
pardon in atoning sacrifice, would remember how David had then received
pardon for his sin, and how the acceptance of his offerings had been the
signal for the disappearance of the destroying angel. So in the Middle
Ages penitents founded churches to expiate their sins. Such sanctuaries
would symbolise to sinners in after-times the possibility of forgiveness;
they were monuments of God’s mercy as well as of the founders’ penitence.
To-day churches, both in fabric and fellowship, have been made sacred for
individual worshippers because in them the Spirit of God has moved them to
repentance and bestowed upon them the assurance of pardon. Moreover, this
solemn experience consecrates for God His most acceptable temples in the
souls of those that love Him.
One other lesson is suggested by the happy issues of Satan’s malign
interference in the history of Israel as understood by the chronicler. The
inauguration of the new altar was a direct breach of the Levitical law,
and involved the superseding of the altar and tabernacle that had hitherto
been the only legitimate sanctuary for the worship of Jehovah. Thus the
new order had its origin in the violation of existing ordinances and the
neglect of an ancient sanctuary. Its early history constituted a
declaration of the transient character of sanctuaries and systems of
ritual. God would not eternally limit himself to any building, or His
grace to the observance of any forms of external ritual. Long before the
chronicler’s time Jeremiah had proclaimed this lesson in the ears of
Judah: “Go ye now unto My place which was in Shiloh, where I caused My
name to dwell at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of
My people Israel.... I will do unto the house which is called by My name,
wherein ye trust, and unto the place which I gave to you and your fathers,
as I have done to Shiloh.... I will make this house like Shiloh, and will
make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.”(323) In the
Tabernacle all things were made according to the pattern that was showed
to Moses in the mount; for the Temple David was made to understand the
pattern of all things “in writing from the hand of Jehovah.”(324) If the
Tabernacle could be set aside for the Temple, the Temple might in its turn
give place to the universal Church. If God allowed David in his great need
to ignore the one legitimate altar of the Tabernacle and to sacrifice
without its officials, the faithful Israelite might be encouraged to
believe that in extreme emergency Jehovah would accept his offering
without regard to place or priest.
The principles here involved are of very wide application. Every
ecclesiastical system was at first a new departure. Even if its highest
claims be admitted, they simply assert that within historic times God set
aside some other system previously enjoying the sanction of His authority,
and substituted for it a more excellent way. The Temple succeeded the
Tabernacle; the synagogue appropriated in a sense part of the authority of
the Temple; the Church superseded both synagogue and Temple. God’s action
in authorising each new departure warrants the expectation that He may yet
sanction new ecclesiastical systems; the authority which is sufficient to
establish is also adequate to supersede. When the Anglican Church broke
away from the unity of Western Christendom by denying the supremacy of the
Pope and refusing to recognise the orders of other Protestant Churches,
she set an example of dissidence that was naturally followed by the
Presbyterians and Independents. The revolt of the Reformers against the
theology of their day in a measure justifies those who have repudiated the
dogmatic systems of the Reformed Churches. In these and in other ways to
claim freedom from authority, even in order to set up a new authority of
one’s own, involves in principle at least the concession to others of a
similar liberty of revolt against one’s self.