"Again the anger of Yahweh was kindled against Israel, and he incited (Hb. suth: incite, allure, instigate) David against them, saying, "Go, count the people of Israel and Judah."
So David, the most famous of Israel's kings, convinces his general Joab to count the people. This process takes several months and when Joab finishes, he reports the total to David, who then becomes upset, confesses his sin to Yahweh, and begs for his "guilt to be removed." (v.10)
Yahweh, speaking through a prophet, gives David three options for his punishment - One: three years famine; Two: three months being pursued by his enemies; or Three: three days of disease throughout all Israel. His options could have been worse but not by much. (v.11ff)
David chooses the shortest of the three, hoping to appeal to God's mercy. The disease spreads throughout the land and "seventy-thousand of the people died." (v.15)
At this point the reader may be somewhat confused: did the text really say that Yahweh caused David to carryout the census and then accept David's confession, but in the end kill 70,000 people? Yahweh was angry with Israel and although we are not privy to know the reason, his intentions to punish were clear from the start.
The book of Chronicles adds even more intrigue to the story. Chronicles, written after the fall of Jerusalem (to the Babylonians in 586 B.C.), is the rewriting of the books of Samuel and Kings. 1 Chronicles 21 contains the updated version of our story.
It begins a little differently: "Satan (Hb. a satan, an adversary or opponent; cf. 1 Sam 29.4 and 1 Kgs 5.4 where the word satan is used as a common noun. I would argue here it is to be taken as a proper noun) stood up against Israel, and incited (Hb. suth) David to count the people of Israel." The story, other than some minor details, is almost identical from this point on.
Now the reader may be even more confused: So this text is telling us that it was Satan who caused David to carryout the census? This appears to be the case. But why? Why change the passage?
We are wise to keep in mind that Chronicles was written just after the Israelites experienced the destruction of their homeland and were carried off some 700 miles in exile to Babylon. The last thing they need is a story that illustrates God punishing people for doing what he wanted them to do. One thought is that the writer of Chronicles found Yahweh's activity in the Samuel passage troubling and decided to credit Satan with the inciting of David.
This explanation fits one of the key motifs of Scripture: God meeting his people where they are. Sometimes we can handle the formula of a book like Proverbs or Deuteronomy: do what is right and good things will happen to you. Other times we need Job: you may do everything right and bad things will still happen to you.
The Samuel story meets people who are comfortable with tension - at the time of the writing of the Samuel 24 story, Israel was at the pinnacle of her affluence and power in the ancient world. We can handle tension when things are going well.
But things were not going well for the first readers of Chronicles and so this version is safer and more appropriate for individuals whose entire world has just collapsed.
So what do we do with a story from the Bible that troubles us? We embrace the tension. We recognize that life is messy and thankfully God has been getting messy with us from the beginning (see Gen 2.4ff) and could not have gotten any messier than he did when he got into that manger.
For a detailed scholarly discussion of these passages, see the Stokes, R. JBL 128, no 1 (2009): 91-106.
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