2 Samuel 24:20

_AND DAVID, ACCORDING TO THE SAYING OF GAD, WENT UP AS THE LORD COMMANDED._ No JFB commentary on these verses....

18-25 God's encouraging us to offer to him spiritual sacrifices, is an evidence of his reconciling us to himself. David purchased the ground to build the altar. God hates robbery for burnt-offering. Those know not what religion is, who chiefly care to make it cheap and easy to themselves, and who are best pleased with that which costs them least pains or money. For what have we our substance, but to honour God with it; and how can it be better bestowed? See the building of the altar, and the offering proper sacrifices upon it. Burnt-offerings to the glory of God's justice; peace-offerings to the glory of his mercy. Christ is our Altar, our Sacrifice; in him alone we may expect to escape his wrath, and to find favour with God. Death is destroying all around, in so many forms, and so suddenly, that it is madness not to expect and prepare for the close of life....

AND HIS SERVANTS - In Chronicles “his four sons,” namely, David’s. It is very possible that David may have taken his sons with him, as well as his elders, and Gad’s original narrative may have mentioned the circumstance, which the compiler of this chapter did not care to specify, and so used the general term “his servants.”...

EXPOSITION 2 SAMUEL 24:1 AND AGAIN THE ANGER OF JEHOVAH WAS KINDLED AGAINST ISRAEL. It is probable that this chapter once stood in intimate connection with 2 Samuel 21:1; and that the famine therein described was followed by a pestilence, of which the blame largely rested upon David, though the sin punished by it was fully shared by the people. In saying that David was moved of Jehovah to number Israel and Judah, the writer acknowledges the great truth that all action, both good and evil, is of God. "Shall there be evil in a city, and Jehovah hath not done it?" (Amos 3:6). While we are taught to pray that we may not be led into temptation, yet trial and temptation are by G

AND ARAUNAH LOOKED,.... Peeped up out of the place in which he had hid himself with his four sons, for fear of the angel, and which they saw, 1 Chronicles 21:20; AND SAW THE KING AND HIS SERVANTS COMING TOWARDS HIM; he perceived, by the course they steered, that they were coming to him: AND ARAUNAH WENT OUT; of the threshingfloor, out of the place where he had hid himself, for he had been threshing wheat, 1 Chronicles 21:20; nor was it thought below great personages in those times to be employed in such work; so Gideon was threshing, when the angel of the Lord appeared to him, Judges 6:11; Boaz winnowed barley in his threshingfloor,...

SAW Here read (1 Chronicles 21:20)....

4. DAVID'S FAILURE: THE ALTAR ON THE THRESHING FLOOR OF ARAUNAH CHAPTER 24 _ 1. The numbering of the people (2 Samuel 24:1)_ 2. The sin acknowledged and Gad's message (2 Samuel 24:10) 3. The pestilence (2 Samuel 24:15) 4. The altar on the threshing floor of Araunah (2 Samuel 24:18) The final chapter of the books of Samuel is of much interest and importance. “And again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and He moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.” In...

1 SAMUEL 24. THE CENSUS (J). (_Cf._ p. 292.) This event also may belong to the beginning of David's reign over all Israel. 2 SAMUEL 24:1. Here is another illustration of the imperfect recognition of the moral nature of Yahweh in the primitive documents. No one is conscious of sin, yet Yahweh, for some inscrutable, arbitrary reason, is angry with His people. Accordingly, He induces David to commit an obvious sin, so that He may have a justification for punishing Israel. It is useless to ask why a census was sinful; such ideas go too far back for us to trace their origin (Numbers 31:50 *). In the Priestly Code censuses are taken quite happily. The subsequent advance of religious thought in Israel is indicated by the fact that in...

LOOKED. looked down. COMING ON. crossing over....

Purchase of Araunah's threshingfloor and erection of an altar there 18. _Gad came_ By direction of the angel, according to 1 Chronicles 21:18. Gad's message was the answer to David's prayer, the announcement to him of the purpose of mercy described in 2 Samuel 24:16. David was still in Jerusalem, praying perhaps at the tent in which the Ark was, when he saw the appearance of the angel hovering above the neighbouring hill, and apparently about to strike the city....