God, Satan or David?

Spoiler alert about Murder on the Orient Express!

One of the two major sins of David is the time when he counted the men in Israel. There are two accounts of this, one in 2 Samuel 24, and the other in 1 Chronicles 21. In 2 Samuel 24:1 it says:

Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and He incited David against them saying “Go number Israel and Judah”.

In 1 Chronicles 21:1 it says:

Then Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel.

As if that wasn’t enough in 2 Samuel 24: 10 David says:

But David’s heart struck him after he had numbered the people. And David said to the Lord, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done”.

And we find a similar report of what David said in 1 Chronicles 21:8.

So who dunnit? The answer is they all did it, a but like Murder on the Orient Express if you like! So what are we to make of it? First there is no contradiction. Now let’s see how this works out. Israel had sinned against God and so was going to suffer judgement. So God incited their leader to make a very bad decision. As an aside, when we have leaders who make bad decisions rather than our first reaction being to complain about our leaders, maybe our first reaction should be to look at ourselves as a people and ask what we need to repent of. Anyway, back to the main point. How did God incite David? Satan did what Satan does, tempts people to sin. He could not have done this unless God allowed him to. This is one reason why Jesus told us to pray “lead us not into temptation”. Then David gave in to the temptation, David was responsible for giving into the temptation. He could not blame Satan for this. Eve, of course, had tried this one without success in the Garden of Eden! (Adam was no better, he blamed the wife!). So there is no contradiction at all.

There are two main lessons we can take from all this. The first is that we are always responsible for our actions. Others may well have had a part in it, as Satan did here, but our first response must always be to consider our own responsibility. The second is that if we look for a nice simple explanation for things we will get it wrong. If we say “God did it, and that’s all there is to it” then we will get in all sorts of trouble. If we say “Satan did it, not God”, then we are denying God’s part. And if we was neither God nor Satan had any part in it, only David we are really up the creek.