DAVID AND THE CENSUS The story of David and the Census is one of the most educational of all Bible stories. It reveals so much to us of God’s qualities of love, justice, and wisdom, not to mention demonstrating the infallible accuracy of his inerrant word of truth. The story begins with King David taking a census. Now, taking a census is not a particularly unusual thing for a ruler to do. In fact, there are occasions when God himself commanded that a census be taken. (Ex. 30:12). As well, the Bible often takes pride in reeling off lists of how many members belonged to each tribe at various parts of the Israelite history. These must have been acquired by a census. But, apparently, there was a time when taking a census was taboo, and poor King David made a mistake. This story is recorded for us in 1 Chronicles 21. As the story goes, Satan tempts David to take a census. After the census has been performed, God finds it necessary to punish David. And, what could possibly be a more reasonable punishment for taking a census, than to go on a killing rampage. Jehovah sends his angel to go forth, smiting innocent people with a pestilence. That should teach David a lesson. In the end, 70,000 persons are killed, before Jehovah decides that David has finally had enough. After smiting the 70,000, just as his angel was about to destroy Jerusalem, Jehovah “saw and he repented of the evil”, and stopped the slaughter. How benevolent of him. Interestingly, there is a parallel account in 2 Samuel chapter 24. I love parallel accounts because they allow comparisons to show the infallibility of God’s word.
• In the 2 Samuel account, it is not Satan who tempts David to take the census, it is Jehovah. Talk about a Freudian slip. This is a bit of a problem. In addition to being an apparent contradiction, it raises some questions. Could Jehovah and Satan be the same person? And, if so, does this make them a quadinity?
• The two accounts differ in the number of Israelites counted. One account puts the number of warriors in Israel and Judah at 1.57 million (excluding Levi and Benjamin), the other at 1.3 million.
• In 2 Samuel, the selling price of the threshing floor was 50 shekels of silver. In 1 Chronicles, it was a whopping 600 shekels of gold. A shekel is 11.4 grams, so, in today’s dollars, David paid either $110 or $77,000 for the threshing floor and animals. That’s a variance between the two accounts of 70,000%.
• In 2 Samuel, David himself offered the burnt offerings. In 2 Chronicles, David did not offer the sacrifices. He would not go before the alter because “he was afraid of the sword of the angel of the LORD.” I wonder why. As well, this account reveals some of the surpassing qualities of the God of love:
• His actions are evil. 1 Chron 21:15 says so.
• He is rash. He acted before he saw the consequences. 2 Sam 24:16 makes this even clearer, by saying that “the LORD repented of the evil”.
• He can, and has, sinned. Why else would he need to repent?
• What kind of a maniac would punish a person by killing innocent strangers?
• Doesn’t the murder of 70,000 people seem a little extreme for a minor infraction?
• What kind of bloody-mindedness makes a person tempt someone to commit a sin, then punish him harshly for it? It seems like he wanted to punish David all along, and just needed an excuse. If nothing else, this is entrapment.
WHAT LIKELY HAPPENED
Assuming that this story has any basis in fact whatsoever, here is a more reasonable take on what happened: An epidemic hits Israel. It probably has something to do with the fact that the cutting edge of Israelite sanitation technology is to take a stick with you when you squat, so that you can cover your waste. For a population of at least 5 million people, that technique wears thin pretty fast, but I digress. A lot of people die before the epidemic finally wears down. Afterwards, the priests need to come up with an explanation for why it happened. They look for a recent event. A census has recently been taken; there must be a connection. So, they use this as an object lesson to reinforce their own power - the lesson being that disobedience to God, and his priests, even in small matters, is nothing to be messed with. SATANI’d like to take a moment and give Satan a blast. Let’s give God the benefit of the doubt for a minute, and assume that his involvement in the tempting was a typo. This means that, once again, Satan is up to his old tricks. I’m really getting fed up with this guy. Not only does his prank cost 70,000 people their lives, but now he’s spray painting his symbol all over the trash cans in my alley. Then, there’s that business with Eve... Seriously, though, I believe that the switching of Jehovah and Satan in this account is more significant than it appears. As we know now, the concepts of God and Satan developed gradually. At the early point in the history of Israel when Samuel was written, God was responsible for everything - both good and evil. By the time Chronicles was written, the evil attributes had been split off into a new character, an embodiment of evil that was adopted from the Persians - Satan. This timing difference also explains the difference in who performed the sacrifices. In the older account, David offered the sacrifices himself. By the time Chronicles was written, that function had been taken over by the Levites, so it was not acceptable for David to do the job.
WHAT’S SO BAD ABOUT A CENSUS, ANYWAY?
The Bible records many occasions where a census was taken. Here are a few examples:
• 2 Chron 2:17,18 - Solomon conducts a census.
• 2 Chron 25:5 - King Amaziah mustered and counted all men 20 years of age and older.
• 2 Chron 26:11-13 - King Uzziah counted soldiers.
• Ezra 2:64, 65 - The returnees from Babylon are numbered. Even the horses, camels, mules, and asses are counted.
• Nehemiah 7 - Jews are numbered as they return to their villages.
• The Israelites were divided and governed in groups of 10, 100, and 1000. This would not be possible without a census. (1 Chron 13:1)
• The count of the Israelites by tribe was given at numerous times throughout their history (see the first 10 chapters of Chronicles and Numbers)
• God commanded Moses to take a census (Numbers 4:1,2).
• God gave Moses instructions on how to take a census (Ex 30:12). Best of all, David himself conducts another census. In 1 Chron 23:2,3, the Bible mentions that David counted the Levites after he had become an old man. So, why did God make such a stink over David’s original census? Well, an obscure reference in Exodus 30:12 gives the only clue. God instructs Moses: “When you take the census of the people of Israel, then each shall give a ransom for himself to the LORD, when you number them, that there may be no plague among them when you number them.” This belief was based on an ancient superstition that it was bad luck to count people. A variation of this superstition persists right up to the present day. Some people believe that if you count a person’s teeth, that person will die. In spite of the superstitions, however, it is impossible to govern reasonably without knowing the population. So, to appease God, it was necessary to perform a sacrifice. If every person gave a sacrifice when they were counted, it would amount to a huge amount of carnage every time there was a census. So, is it possible that the issue in this story was the failure to make a sacrifice? No, 1 Chron 21:2-4 indicates that it was not the sacrifice that was the issue, but rather the count itself. In this scripture, Joab begs David not to take the census. If a census was OK, providing that a sacrifice was given, it would make sense that Joab would have begged David to make the necessary sacrifice, rather than to avoid the count entirely. As well, in verse 5, Joab skips counting the tribes of Levi and Benjamin because “the King’s command was abhorrent to Joab”, again indicating that it was the census itself, not the lack of a sacrifice that was the problem. So, we will likely never know exactly what pissed Jehovah off in this case, but it was a bad time to be an Israelite.
The Atheist's Book of Bible Stories - Ch. 13 - David and the Census
by RunningMan 9 Replies latest watchtower bible
-
RunningMan
-
peacefulpete
Nice posting. On the upside, modern archaeology has revealed that any tribe in the region at the time would have numbered in the few thousands not millions and so IF these legends reflect some actual ancient tragedy (not likely given their polemical nature), like a epidemic, the numbers who died are likely as exagerated as the population figures.
-
VM44
It appears that in the NWT Bible the word "calamity" is used instead of the word "evil" in 1 Chron 21:15 and 2 Sam 24:16. --VM44
-
tdogg
Fred, you are like Thomas Paine with a sense of humor.
BTW, when God repents, does he have to make a sacrifice? And would the 70,000 be sufficiant or would he have to kill additional folks to atone to himself for his evil?
-
peacefulpete
Notably the WT makes no attempt to harmonize these two versions of the same story, instead they call attention to the differences and claim they were two separate occasions!
-
RunningMan
Do they really have the audacity to claim it was two separate occations? I mean, what are the odds of David taking a census, and being punished for it with the death of 70,000 people - then doing it again with exactly the same result?
-
stillajwexelder
This is the biggest load of horse#$^t I have ever read - there is nothing wrong with taking a census - Gods one true organization the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society do it every month when we loyal dubs put in our monthly report
-
peacefulpete
That is what I remember. This 'solution' also allows them to 'harmonize' a number of Gospel discrepencies. It's quite brilliant really, rather than appear ignorant of the problems they announce the problems and then just smile and use words like: "Obviously" (or apparently) these are supplementery accounts describing separate occasions". Perhaps someone still holding the Insight books can confirm.
-
DannyBloem
I just found something in the 'insight book' about it and remembered this thread.
They do not claim it are two seperate occasions.
They say that the difference are maybe due to errors of people copying the scriptures, or differnt ways of counting etc. In other words: "we do not know, but don't want to say that"
Danny
-