COST AND CONSEQUENCES
Opening Prayer
Lord, teach me the value of sacrificial giving.
Read 2 SAMUEL 24:18–25
18 On that day Gad went to David and said to him, “Go up and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” 19 So David went up, as the Lord had commanded through Gad. 20 When Araunah looked and saw the king and his officials coming toward him, he went out and bowed down before the king with his face to the ground.
21 Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?”
“To buy your threshing floor,” David answered, “so I can build an altar to the Lord, that the plague on the people may be stopped.”
22 Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take whatever he wishes and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and here are threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood. 23 Your Majesty, Araunah gives all this to the king.” Araunah also said to him, “May the Lord your God accept you.”
24 But the king replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”
So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekels of silver for them. 25 David built an altar to the Lord there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Then the Lord answered his prayer in behalf of the land, and the plague on Israel was stopped.
New International Version (NIV)
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Reflect
“There is, at least in the affluent west, a prevalent conviction that somehow actions and consequences can be separated… that someone, somewhere ought to make it all go away” (Mary J. Evans, The Message of Samuel, 281).
The concluding episode of the census sums up key themes in the book of Samuel. The abuse of power, self-reliance and pride are shown as recurring temptations for rulers. The connection between act and consequence is highlighted repeatedly, not least through the punishment following the crime. Thus David’s reliance on military power in the census is countered by the decimation of his troops through plague (15). David’s story shows that even the most godly of people will fall at times, and not even they can escape consequences. Leaders especially have to recognize that their sin ripples beyond their private lives and ultimately on those under them. Nevertheless, how they respond once they fall is key; David’s attitude, as we saw yesterday, is exemplary.
God’s command to build an altar on the field where he stopped the plague (18) is the final step in reconciliation. It again shows that David understands the true aim of royal power. Araunah offers his field voluntarily, though the king can expropriate it—especially since the man is a local Canaanite and, as such, has less right than an Israelite whose land is inalienable (cf. Lev. 25:23–28; 1 Kings 21:3). David, however, understands both royal obligation towards the weak (Deut. 24:17) and the logic that sacrifice must be personal—and costly (24).
It speaks of God’s amazing generosity that David, though sinful himself, is allowed a chance to mediate atonement for the people through sacrifices and prayer (25). It highlights the mandate of the king not to grasp and seize, but to give at a cost to himself and for the benefit of the people. As Christians we recognize in David a forerunner of God’s chosen King, Jesus, who has given the ultimate sacrifice of himself for us all.
Apply
Consider the actions of the people in Philippians 4:14–18 and 2 Corinthians 8:1–5. How closely does this line up with David’s actions in our present account?
Closing prayer
Lord, I acknowledge You: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18).
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