Our daughter, Jill, is reading through the chronological Bible this year. I have never done this myself but I have been curious about it. I always start at Genesis 1 and read it through cover to cover. But Jill says that she is getting a better understanding of things through her reading plan that now has her in the Old Testament in the books of 1st and 2nd Samuel as well as 1st and 2nd Chronicles. Unlike most reading plans, she seems to jump around through various books and sometimes ends up studying different passages of the same event. Such is the case in tonight’s post.
Especially in the Old Testament, there are parallel stories in different books of the Scripture and, recently, Jill called me with an apparent error in the Bible. Of course, she knows better than to assume a mistake. She’s heard me for years say that if there is something you don’t understand in your reading of God’s Word, it is probably because you should be acquiring more knowledge about the topic you are questioning. She found two passages in her daily reading that seemed to indicate an inconsistency between two Old Testament books.
Tonight’s post centers around King David’s census that he was going to take. In 2 Samuel 24:1, the Scripture tells us, “Again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and He incited David against them, saying, “Go and take a census of Israel and Judah.”
This, in itself, is unusual. A man only had the right to count things that belonged to him. Clearly, the people of Israel belonged to God; not to King David. And we are told that God was angry with Israel.
Now, a parallel passage occurs in 1 Chronicles 21:1. It says, “And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.“ So, in this passage, Satan is the one who incites King David to take the census. Now this seems to be a rather glaring discrepancy. In fact, I hate to admit that I have never noticed this in all the hours that I have been spent studying, including all my years in seminary! So what’s the case? Is the Bible wrong, or do we just need more education on the matter?
The easiest and first place that people jump to is that we are talking about two different censuses. The problem is, these are different accounts of the same incident – the same census. Just as there are different accounts in the Gospel of the same stories with Jesus, different perspectives are not uncommon.
So we are left with coming up with a different, alternate story of the reason that in one verse, God incites David to take a census – and in a parallel passage, we are told that Satan is the culprit. That’s about as large a divide as we find in the Bible.
For a better understanding of this, we would do well to consider the story of Job. In reading this Old Testament book, it is clear that Satan is the one who dealt devastation into Job’s life. But we also need to acknowledge that Satan approached God; and God gave Satan permission to test Job, as long as Job did not lose his life in the process. It’s difficult to believe that Satan still has access to God in the throne room of heaven – and will have access until he is thrown out of heaven in the book 9of Revelation. In other words, God allowed Satan access to Job. And while Satan did harm to Job, his family and his possessions, God eventually restored Job at the end of the book.
I think a similar thing happened here. While I believe that Satan was the one that incited King David to take a census, God must have allowed it. And in the language of the Old Testament, it is certainly possible that since God was the ultimate authority who allowed Satan’s intervention, He was listed as the One who incited King David in the verse from 2 Samuel.
It would appear that God was angry at Israel and used Satan as an intermediary to accomplish His goal. Similarly, in the book of Ezekiel, God used neighboring nations of Israel to punish the country and He even allowed Israel to be taken into captivity. He left His home in the Temple which is something the people of Israel never thought would ever happen. And God even allowed the Temple to be destroyed. In our humanity, we have no way of knowing how God will accomplish His purpose with the people of Israel, or us, for that matter.
Our verse for tonight highlights the fact that God prunes us to ultimately draw us closer to Him, in accordance with His will for our lives. The author of Hebrews tells us, in Hebrews 12:10-11, “Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”
My encouragement this evening is that God still loves us and sometimes “prunes” or disciplines us to make us more productive for His kingdom. My prayer is that we will take these diversions in stride and realize that God is always making us stronger and more like Jesus as we mature in our faith. Have a great day in the Lord, grace and peace…