Sunday Sermonette: Explain it to me because I don ' t get it

Chapter 21 repeats the story of 2 Samuel 24 -- the last chapter of Samuel -- but does try to fix one obvious problem. In Samuel, God tells David to take the census, and then gets mad at him for doing it. That doesn ' t seem to make any sense, so the Chronicler has Satan tell David to take the census. There are several other discrepancies as far as the census numbers, and the number of people God kills because David took the census. (Might have been 70,000, might have been 200,00) Either way, the census numbers are ridiculous. In Samuel, there are 1.3 million soldiers in Israel and Judah, while in Chronicles there are 1.5 million. There are currently 485,000 personnel in the United States army.The less obvious is why the census is somehow sinful or an offense to God.In fact, the Book of Numbers is so called because it includes not one, but two censuses, both ordered by God and perfectly acceptable to him. (Those numbers are equally ridiculous, by the way.) Of course a commander want to know how many soldiers he has. There is something weird going on here but I don ' t know what it is.21 Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.2 So David said to Joab and the commanders of the troops, “Go and count the Israelites from Beersheba to Dan. Then report back to me so that I may know how many there are.”Viz. 2 Samuel 24:24 Again the anger of theLord burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go and take a ce...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs