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Back to Question of the Week Q: My friend and I have been studying in II Samuel and have reached the end. We just read chapter 24 where God tells David to go and "number Israel and Judah." David does this but then reproaches himself and asks God to remit the guilt. My first question is: why is David feeling guilty? He did what God wanted. Then God sends him a terrible dilemma not directly but through a seer telling him to choose his punishment. All the choices are terrible and David leaves the choice to God. 70,000 innocent people are killed in three days and the only thing that seems to stop the pestilence is that God didn't want Jerusalem destroyed. Why is this story in the Torah and what are we to gain from it. Why does the book end here? What are we to learn from this story? God seems to be neither just or compassionate. Can you help us make sense of this? Yolanda |
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A: Oy, Yolanda, why don't the Reb's faithful following ever ask about the simple Bible stories, like Samson with the bad hair day or Noah and his little drinking problem? Instead, your ever-diligent Reb on the Web is blessed with Tanach students of the highest level, who seek out the hardest and most obscure texts, thus keeping the Reb close to the books and away from that well-deserved margarita on the beach. . . . Ah yes, back to King David, in 2 Samuel 24. Yes, the text as it reads presents an impossible contradiction, as you've pointed out. In verse 1, God appears to "entice" David to take a census of the people, and then, as you note, appears to punish the nation for doing just that. One way that the traditional commentaries deal with this problem is by noticing that God is angry with Israel before the census ever comes up; some of the midrashim suggest that God was angry with the people for not building the Temple sooner. That sort of makes sense, in a limited, textual way, as the buying of the land for the Temple is the end of this chapter, but we're still left with the apparent contradiction of God changing God's mind, as it were. Nor does it deal with the problem of why God would send a plague killing thousands of people for no explicit reason. Many commentators also compare verse 24:1 in 1 Samuel with verse 21:1 in First Chronicles, which is a parallel history of the Davidic monarchy. In Chronicles, it isn't God but "a Satan" (see below) who convinces David to take the census. If we take the verse in Chronicles back to the verse in Samuel, then it could read something like this: God was angry with the people [for something that already happened], and then a Satan enticed David to take a count of the people, and then David told Joab to go do it. This reading gets God off the hook for changing God's mind; in this reading, God never told David to take the census, so God has a right to be mad at him for doing it. (Let's deal with the plague later.) [Please note that a Satan in the Bible is not the "Devil" of Christian belief, who is an independent divine being, albeit an evil one; rather, a Biblical Satan is kind of an overzealous prosecutor whose mission it is to play "gotcha" with people, to prove that they really aren't so good and righteous. The most famous Satan in the Bible is the one at the beginning of the book of Job, who is sort of like the Heavenly Kenneth Starr, out to get the saintly Job but still definitely in the employ of God, Who is portrayed as the Boss of all the angels.] So, now one could ask, what's so bad about taking a census? Some of the commentators suggest that David wanted the census for the purposes of military conscription, or taxation, or creating labor brigades- some kind of arrogant or illegitimate purpose. That also makes sense- why would a king need to know exactly who lived where if not for the purpose of consolidating his authority? However, even if we accept that David did something wrong in taking the count of the people, and even if we accept that God wasn't the one who told him to do it (both of which require a certain willingness to stretch the text), how can we possibly accept that God would send a plague upon the people? This is even assuming a strict reading of verse 1, in which God is already mad at the people for something else. Nor was this the first time that God is portrayed as effecting the deaths of large numbers of people; the most famous example would be the story of the Flood in Noah's time, but one could also compare Numbers 11:33, 14:26-44, chapter 25, and other stories. Many of us are understandably reluctant to take these stories at face value, for both theological and moral reasons. The plain meaning of these Biblical texts is that ill-fortune is a punishment from God for sin; not only do I see very little evidence that disease is anything other than a fact of nature, but I would be very uncomfortable worshipping a Deity Who sent horrible physical sufferings upon people for ritual and religious infractions. So I'm stuck with these Biblical texts which posit ideas I don't believe. One option is to understand the texts historically; perhaps there were plagues or illnesses which broke out among the Israelites, and they interpreted such occurences as God's wrath. That's a possibility, but reading the texts as simply the misunderstandings of a pre-technological culture doesn't satisfy me either. Personally, I try to hear what the text suggests to me as a religious message, which sometimes requires bracketing the potential theological or historical problems. In this case, the message I hear, with the help of the commentators, is that a nation which allows its king too much power is a nation that is going to get in trouble, one way or another. This message is reinforced by verses 13-14, where David seems to let God choose his punishment, but subtely suggests that God should punish the people rather than David himself. In other words, by saying "let me not fall into the hands of men," David is suggesting that three months of exile isn't his choice; thus, either famine or plague will fall upon the people. On the surface, David seems to be repenting his arrogance or his plans for self-aggrandizement; but after the consequences become plain, he evades responsibility and places the burden of his mistake on the people. Thus, I read this text as a warning: watch your leaders carefully, for they will abuse their power, and don't let them evade responsibility for their mistakes, for it will bring disaster down upon the nation. NJL |
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