The Prophets Nathan and Gad Deal With King David in His Sins

On both of the occasions when David is said to have sinned in his administration as king, God sent prophets to correct him. God corrected David's great sin, the one involving Bathsheba and Uriah, by sending the prophet Nathan to confront him. By contrast, in the matter of the census David recognized he had sinned and asked God's forgiveness as soon as the census was completed. The prophet Gad was sent to him not to bring him to repentance, but to give him a choice of public consequences for not honoring God in the census and instructions concerning how to rectify his error. David repented and was forgiven of both sins, but the first one nevertheless had severe long-term consequences.

On both of the occasions when David is said to have sinned in his administration as king, God sent prophets to correct him. God corrected David’s great sin, the one involving Bathsheba and Uriah, by sending the prophet Nathan to confront him. While the writer of 2 Samuel (2 Kings in the Hebrew canon) also records the sin involving the census, the writer of 1 Kings (3 Kings in the Hebrew canon) discounts the sin involving the census, counting David’s adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband the only blemish on his record:

David did that which was right in Yahweh’s eyes, and didn’t turn away from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, except only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.

1 Kings 15:5.

David denied he had committed this sin until the prophet Nathan confronted him, as explained in the next section of this post.

By contrast, in the matter of the census David recognized he had sinned and asked God’s forgiveness as soon as the census was completed. The prophet Gad was sent to him not to bring him to repentance, but to give him a choice of public consequences for not honoring God in the census and instructions concerning how to rectify his error. This is explained in the last section of this post.

Nathan Confronts David’s Sin Toward Bathsheba and Uriah, 2 Samuel 12

Some commentators insist that David was unaware that his actions involving Bathsheba and Uriah were sins, at least for a king, and, therefore, that these sins were not willful. That is, they believe that he did not realize his acts were prohibited to him at the time he did them. These commentators believe this to be necessary because, they say, the Law of Moses prescribed no offering for willful sins–so, if David sinned willfully in this matter, God could not have forgiven him. However, the Law of Moses did, in fact, prescribe an annual offering that covered even the willful sins of the people of Israel as a whole–the burnt offering and the release of the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement. Exodus 30:10; Leviticus 16. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest was to present two goats to the Lord. The first goat he was to kill as a burnt offering, and use its blood “make atonement for the Holy Place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions, even all their sins; and so he shall do for the Tent of Meeting that dwells with them in the middle of their uncleanness.” Leviticus 16:16. “All their sins,” stated without qualification, certainly appears to include the people’s willful sins. He then went into the Most Holy place and used some of the sacrificial blood to purify the things in the Most Holy from the “impurities” of the people. Leviticus 16:17-18. After that, he to take the other goat and “lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, even all their sins; and he shall put them on the head of the goat, and shall send him away into the wilderness,” after which “the goat shall carry all their iniquities on himself to a solitary land.” Leviticus 16:20-22. Also, ironically, the half-shekel sanctuary offering which was to be given by every adult male whenever a census was taken–the exact offering King David neglected when he took the census in 2 Samuel 24 (see the discussion of that incident, below)–was a “ransom” to be given to the Lord to “make atonement” for the people, without any mention of their “sins,” and, therefore, without any qualification being made that it could only be given for sins caused by ignorance or carelessness and not for willful sins. Exodus 30:11-16. Thus it is not necessary to deny, on doctrinal grounds, that David knew he was doing wrong.

King David was familiar with the Law–he meditated on it daily. Psalm 119:97. He certainly must have known–at least in the sense of being on notice–that adultery and murder were wrong. Still, the fact that the prophet Nathan had to confront his sin by first telling him a parable pertaining to someone else suggests that David, the absolute middle-eastern monarch, was not fully aware that these commandments of the Law were fully applicable to him in his official capacity (such restrictions didn’t apply to the kings of other nations around Israel):

Yahweh sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him, “There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor.  The rich man had very many flocks and herds,  but the poor man had nothing, except one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and raised. It grew up together with him, and with his children. It ate of his own food, drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was like a daughter to him.  A traveler came to the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to prepare for the wayfaring man who had come to him, but took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared it for the man who had come to him.”

2 Samuel 12:1-4 (WEB)

When seeking to make David fully aware of his sin, Nathan did not appeal to the Law and accuse David of violating it. Instead, Nathan told a story, ostensibly about another unnamed man, who had committed a sin that was parallel in underlying motivation and effect to David’s sin. The bad guy in Nathan’s story was, like David, very rich–and, therefore, implicitly, powerful in his community. The bad guy had vast flocks and herds from which he could take animals to serve himself and his guests, just as David had many wives–and could have taken more legitimately, had he wanted to. The poor man had only a single ewe lamb, which was his beloved pet–just as David’s trusting friend Uriah had only one wife, Bathsheba. Yet, when a stranger came to the rich man’s door, seeking hospitality–just as David’s lust came to him–the rich man did not have an animal from his own flock prepared for dinner. Instead, he committed an act of great greed, indifference and cruelty by having his men take the poor man’s pet away from him to prepare her for dinner. The rich man’s underlying sin was indifference to the needs and pain of his poor neighbor. Indifference is the opposite of love, which is the objective of the whole Law. Romans 13:8-10. This indifference permitted the rich man to indulge his greed in serving the traveling stranger by committing a very cruel act, thus directly violating the second greatest commandment–“you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Leviticus 19:18 (a scripture David would have known!); Matthew 22:39. In David’s case, this sin was completed as soon as he took Bathsheba; the murder of Uriah was just a predictable consequence of that sin. However, at this point, Nathan was still telling a story about an unnamed “rich man,” and had not yet identified David as the rich man. David, for his part, also was not yet applying the story to himself, but believed he was still being asked to impartially judge a case to which he was not a party. And judge he did:

David’s anger burned hot against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As Yahweh lives, the man who has done this deserves to die!

2 Samuel 12:5

It was only after David had unknowingly judged himself as worthy of death that Nathan identifies David as the “rich man” who had stolen his poor neighbor’s wife, then had his neighbor killed, and began to describe the consequences:

 Nathan said to David, “You are the man. This is what Yahweh, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. I gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that would have been too little, I would have added to you many more such things.  Why have you despised Yahweh’s word, to do that which is evil in his sight? You have struck Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon.  Now therefore the sword will never depart from your house, because you have despised me, and have taken Uriah the Hittite’s wife to be your wife.’”

2 Samuel 12:7-10 (WEB)

The first consequence was that the sword by which David had Uriah killed would “never leave” his “house.” This consequence led not only to turmoil in David’s immediate family and rebellions during David’s reign, and to the division and ultimate conquest of Israel, but also led to consequences that continue to the present day, as will be fully detailed in a later post. Nathan then describes the public chastisement that will later come on David and his house during only one of those rebellions against him–the one led by his son Absalom:

“This is what Yahweh says: ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he will lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did this secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.’”

2 Samuel 12:11-12 (WEB); compare 2 Samuel 16:20-22 (the exact fulfillment of the prophecy).

At this point, David recognized his sin, agreed with God about it (confessed it), and repented:

David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against Yahweh.”

2 Samuel 12:13a (WEB).

God showed David’s repentance to be true by responding favorably to it, and forgiving his sin–but not taking away the consequences that were fixed from the time it was committed:

Nathan said to David, “Yahweh also has put away your sin. You will not die. However, because by this deed you have given great occasion to Yahweh’s enemies to blaspheme, the child also who is born to you will surely die.”

2 Samuel 12:13b-14 (WEB).

Just as God had said, when the child of David’s adultery with Bathsheba was born, it was “very sick.” The sickness continued for a week, during which time David fasted and prayed that God would heal the child. Nevertheless, it died. 2 Samuel 12:15-18.

God forgave David, and left the kingdom with him and his house. However, from then on his house and kingdom were both riven by violence, both internal and external–and the kingdom of God suffers violence to the present day, Matthew 11:12, in the midst of which we have peace only because the last and greatest King in David’s house has overcome the world. John 16:32-33.

The Prophet Gad Counsels David after the Sin involving the Census, 2 Samuel 24

Some years later, God was angry with Israel, not David, with consequences for both Israel and David:

Again Yahweh’s anger burned against Israel, and he moved David against them, saying, “Go, count Israel and Judah.”

2 Samuel 24:1 (WEB)

The parallel account in 1 Chronicles ascribes David’s motivation to satan “standing up against” Israel. (1 Chronicles 21:1). The best explanation for one passage saying that satan stood up against Israel, resulting in David taking the census, and the other passage saying that God moved David to act against Israel to vindicate his anger, appears to be that, because God was angry with Israel, he permitted satan to attack David and move him to carelessly take a census.

The reason for God’s anger against Israel on this occasion is not mentioned, but it led directly to David’s sin. David’s sin was not taking a census. Nothing in the Law prohibited Israel’s rulers from taking a census. However, whenever a census was taken, the event was to be used to remind the people of their dependence on God through the collection of a prescribed offering for the support of the sanctuary, which was to be collected to “make atonement”–or, in some translations give a “ransom”–for their souls to God:

 Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, “When you take a census of the children of Israel, according to those who are counted among them, then each man shall give a ransom for his soul to Yahweh when you count them, that there be no plague among them when you count them. They shall give this, everyone who passes over to those who are counted, half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary (the shekel is twenty gerahs); half a shekel for an offering to Yahweh. Everyone who passes over to those who are counted, from twenty years old and upward, shall give the offering to Yahweh. The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less, than the half shekel, when they give the offering of Yahweh, to make atonement for your souls. You shall take the atonement money from the children of Israel, and shall appoint it for the service of the Tent of Meeting; that it may be a memorial for the children of Israel before Yahweh, to make atonement for your souls.”

Exodus 30:11-16 (WEB)

2 Samuel 24 indicates that David sent his officers out to “count Israel and Judah,” but apparently did not remember that, when he did so, he had to collect the offering to atone for their souls, as this offering is nowhere mentioned. Though the writer does not identify the sin by which Israel angered the Lord, he records the words of David’s cousin and chief general Joab which allude to David’s underlying sin in taking the census–pride:

Joab said to the king, “Now may Yahweh your God add to the people, however many they may be, one hundred times; and may the eyes of my lord the king see it. But why does my lord the king delight in this thing?” Notwithstanding, the king’s word prevailed against Joab, and against the captains of the army. Joab and the captains of the army went out from the presence of the king to count the people of Israel.

2 Samuel 24:3-4 (WEB), compare 1 Chronicles 21:3-4.

David at this point regarded the numerosity and power of his people as his own accomplishment, not God’s, and so “delighted in” knowing their numbers against good advice. This also accounts for his failure to remember the need to collect the required atonement offering with the census. If the prosperity of the people was his own accomplishment, why should he remember an offering to atone for them? This proud attitude that temporarily afflicted David, apparently at the Lord’s instigation, likely directly reflected pride among the people he ruled. 1 Samuel 12:14-15, 24-25. As soon as David learned the results of the census, he came to his senses about the census:

 David’s heart struck him after he had counted the people. David said to Yahweh, “I have sinned greatly in that which I have done. But now, Yahweh, put away, I beg you, the iniquity of your servant; for I have done very foolishly.”

2 Samuel 24:10 (WEB), compare 1 Chronicles 21:7-8.

Once again, when David repented, God forgave, but there were still consequences to be borne:

When David rose up in the morning, Yahweh’s word came to the prophet Gad, David’s seer, saying, “Go and speak to David, ‘Yahweh says, “I offer you three things. Choose one of them, that I may do it to you.”’”

So Gad came to David, and told him, and said to him, “Shall seven years of famine come to you in your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ pestilence in your land? Now answer, and consider what answer I shall return to him who sent me.”

2 Samuel 24:11-13 (WEB); compare 1 Chronicles 21:9-12.

The consequences–in this instance, all of the consequences–of David’s sin in not collecting the “atonement” or “ransom” offering for the people, was that some of the people not ransomed as required would die–in a famine, in battle, or by a sudden disease. This exactly answered the people’s, and David’s, pride in what they believed they had accomplished, building a strong and prosperous kingdom in their own strength. David, now recognizing the folly of believing, even for a moment, that he was responsible for the nation’s success, asked God not to put him and the nation “into man’s hand” through defeat in battle, a scenario which would have made David responsible for the defense of his people against God’ punishment. David also recognized that God’s mercies were great. He left God the choice between the other two options:

David said to Gad, “I am in distress. Let us fall now into Yahweh’s hand; for his mercies are great. Let me not fall into man’s hand.”

2 Samuel 24:14 (WEB) compare 1 Chronicles 21:13.

God then chose to rebuke the pride of the people, and of David, by releasing a plague of very limited duration that would kill only a relatively small proportion of the population–just enough to make his point that the pride that regarded the success of the nation as self-made, and its people therefore as not in need of the prescribed “ransom:”

So Yahweh sent a pestilence on Israel from the morning even to the appointed time; and seventy thousand men died of the people from Dan even to Beersheba. When the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, Yahweh relented of the disaster, and said to the angel who destroyed the people, “It is enough. Now withdraw your hand.” Yahweh’s angel was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.

2 Samuel 24:15-16 (WEB), compare 1 Chronicles 21:14-16.

The total number of men of military age in Israel before the plague had been 1,300,000. 2 Samuel 24:9. So the number that died was just over five percent of Israel’s fighting men–not even a tithe. Still, when David saw the messenger God had sent to carry out this judgment, he recognized that, as leader of the people, he was responsible for the plague, and asked God to withdraw his hand from the people:

David spoke to Yahweh when he saw the angel who struck the people, and said, “Behold, I have sinned, and I have done perversely; but these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand be against me, and against my father’s house.”

2 Samuel 24:17 (WEB), compare 1 Chronicles 21:17.

As verse 6 indicates, God had already heard David’s prayer before he prayed it, and stayed his hand–though David did not yet know it. That is why David was able to see the angel standing over the threshing floor of Araunah (also called Ornan in 1 Chronicles), not invisibly going throughout the kingdom doing its assigned task. At this point, the prophet Gad was sent to David again, with instructions as to how replace the neglected “atonement” or “ransom” offering and completely remove the only temporarily stayed judgment from Israel:

Gad came that day to David, and said to him, “Go up, build an altar to Yahweh on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.”

2 Samuel 24:18 (WEB), compare 1 Chronicles 21:18.

David obeyed these directions, paying full price for the land on which the new altar was built and the offerings that were burnt on it. As a result, God received David’s prayer to spare the people and removed the plague from Israel–though the 70,000 that had already died remained dead:

David went up according to the saying of Gad, as Yahweh commanded. Araunah looked out, and saw the king and his servants coming on toward him. Then Araunah went out, and bowed himself before the king with his face to the ground.  Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?”

David said, “To buy your threshing floor, to build an altar to Yahweh, that the plague may be stopped from afflicting the people.”

Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him. Behold, the cattle for the burnt offering, and the threshing instruments and the yokes of the oxen for the wood. All this, O king, does Araunah give to the king.” Araunah said to the king, “May Yahweh your God accept you.”

The king said to Araunah, “No; but I will most certainly buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to Yahweh my God which cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. David built an altar to Yahweh there, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So Yahweh was entreated for the land, and the plague was removed from Israel.

2 Samuel 24:19-25 (WEB), compare 1 Chronicles 21:19-30.

The threshing floor of Araunah (Ornan) later became the site of the Temple built by Solomon. 2 Chronicles 3:1. Thus, the very site of the Temple was a permanent reminder of the people’s need for atonement and ransom for their souls.

The rest of the Scriptures mention no future adverse consequences of David’s sin involving the census–70,000 died in the plague, David prayed, then obeyed Gad’s instructions, the sin was forgiven and the whole incident was over. This contrasts with David’s sin with Bathsheba and Uriah, which, though likewise forgiven by God, has had severe historical consequences to the present day.

NEXT (for now): Repentance and Earthly Consequences: The Consequences of David’s Sins–Including Jesus