The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Chronicles — Section 335

yes, there are sins of the heart, of the subtle undergrowth of pride and ambition, and trust of self, which far surpass all others in significance and heinousness. Surely it Vl"ere enough for the quondam shepherd-boy, now King of Israel, to be vicegerent of the King of kings? But David has slipped the charm of modest love and reverent fear and devoted religious service, and aims to be ruler in his own right. He does this Just as really as Judas Iscariot, the disciple, thought it was open to him to compass and super- sede the Master if he could. This constitutes the essence of what seems to be held up to view as the unparalleled offence of David, that he forgets his subordinate place, and presumes to try to steal an advantage on his own supreme Master. Does David wish to know the number of his fighting men? It is perhaps in part matter of pure vanity, probably in greater part in order to estimate the strength of his own supposed resources; iu other words, to calculate how far he may afford to dispense with simple, trustful, humble, daily dependence-dependence on the Lord his God. Nor was the calculating less or less pernicious, that it was unacknowledged, unconscious. JI. THE BUFFERING ENTAILED BY THE ONE SINFUL DETERMINATION OF ONE MAN. (Vera. 14, 15.) 1. We have to credit David with causing now one of the most dreadful forms of human suffering. The state of mind which is filled with apprehension of suffering is itself suffering of the worst kind for any individual. It is not diminished by company, nor distributed by being shared among many. It is terribly Intensified when a community, a nation, an army, is the prey of it. First, excited imagination very likely goes beyond the ensuing realities if they were but left to themselves. Then the facts result otherwise, and the realities on which the sun in the heavens bas looked down in not a few such cases surpass imagination, even to beggaring it. History's very devotee declines to believe. What cries, what wails, what maddened curses must have rent the air wherever the ear of David was to hear, whether he travelled or rested, whether he listened or strove to shut out every sound! When once pestilence walks abroad, it not only kills so many thousands of its own professional right, but from hour to hour, from morning to night, it tortures an uncounted number, who" hang in doubt of their life," and have no rest, because they "have no assurance of their life" nor, indeed, of lives dearer to them than their own. And it is this which David does for the very flock it was his life-work to fold, to feed, and to shield free even from the breath of fear. 2. We have to credit David with having cut short some seventy thou- sand human careers. Even though the nation may have deserved the punishment, and their crimes have cried for judgment, David has laden himself withal with the re~ponsi- bility or inflicting it. So many streams of human life he has dried up. So many deaths lie at his door. At so many burials the loud mourners and the low mourners, say it is he who has rifled the home of life and love, and opened the sepulchre's dark door to receive an untimely prey. Youth he has cut down, beauty he has blighted, in their opening freshest hope. 'l'he strong men, the pride and defence of his kingdom, and the support of its homes, he has laid weak as the weakest. And for the peaceful or splendid sunsetting of old age he hllll substituted a horizon overspread with the gloomiest clouds. 'l'his is what one sinful determination of one man carried through could do, and really did. And it is a type of many, many an antitype. It is a typo not least in this one element of it, that it did what it never meant nor thought to do, and yet is to the full answerable for it, because it was not in the path of duty, and was distinctly out of it. Sin sometimes takes very heavy toll out of those who do wrong, not because they mean to do so, but because they do not mean not to do it, and do not livo with watching and prayer. 3. We have to credit David's sin with an incalculable amount of human grief. Not always, by any means, is he who is gone the 0110 who deserves most pity, even as he certainly is past the reach of any sympathy, but rather those who remain who remember, who grieve, who weep, and not merely "would not be com- forted " but' cannot be comforted, for comfort is not. 'fo wound human affections, to make hearts bleed, to crush human courage, hope, life, is surely among the deadly sins, and to be revealed "in that day." If Abel's blood cried to God from the very earth, what cries must have reached him from the innumerable bleeding hearts of bereft homes now, wrecked of hope and joy and peace by David I llJ. THE STRUGGLE OF DAVID TO EMERGE FROM THE CONSEQUENCES OF HIS SIN, ANTI TO EXTRIOATE BIB PEOPLE AFTER HIM. (Vers. 12, 13, 16, 17.) And it must bo allowed at once that David begins to resume again his better self. 1. The struggle was the 334 THE FIRST BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES. [oH, XXI. 1-30, -- --------------------------------- struggle of conviction, confession, prayer, even to wrestling; not the struggle against these. Although it may be held that there is some ambiguity about it, yet a com- parison and combination of the two accounts need leave little hesitation as to the real order of things. David's heart "smote him" after that he had numbered the people. Never mind that, it was not quite a spontaneous stirring of the conscience and heart that ,were within him; yet there was the fact-branded and seared they were not. Gad's sudden morning call and message (2 Sam. xxiv. 11) roused David from hie torpor in the twinkling of an eye. It was upon this event that conviction, most unreserved confession, entreaty for pardon and mercy, and in due time intercession, followed. And they followed with no other calculation than the calculation most instinctive of an awakened and alarmed soul. The real ring, solemn though the ring was, of other well- known self-condemnation of David, is now unmistakably heard. Not a syllable of excuse, not an accent of extenuation, is to be detected in the tone, 2. The struggle shows David in the midst of the very paroxysm of grief, and fresh from the rebuke of bis great Master, to be possessed in a peculiar manner of the wisest and righteHt attitude of disposition towards God. (1) God offers an option. David declines it, He has already used his own free will and power to choose once too often. He will renounce it now. (2) In declining to avail himself of that proffered option, he gives a reason, which shows how accurately he bad struck the balance between the "mercies" of God and the "band" of man. It apparently now amounts to an instinct with him, that there was no room for a moment's hesitation between throwing himself and people upon tha "mercies" of God, or being thrown into the hands of men. This his strongest impres- sion was also his correctest, which cannot always be said of our strongest and most absolute impressions. 'Tisa great lesson for all to learn, and a great fact in the world's history all up to this present moment, that the paternal love is to be better trusted than the fraternal. The fatherhood of God is, after all, a better-ascertained reality than the brotherhood of humanity. (3) At the very time that David is expecting his punishment, and acknowledging that he is "in a great strait," ne honours God by recording a testimony which had come of his own long experience of him : "For very great are his mercies." The rod often brings us to our senses, and when only uplifted will suffice to bring a man to himself. But rarely did David-or any one else who had known, loved, done the truth, but fallen away from it too-recover himself so rapidly and apparently so completely in all essential respects. 3, The struggle offers an undesigned but fine example of an intelligent acknowledgment of the essence of the principle of sacrifice. When the scene is gone a little further, and the angel with drawn sword is beheld, David in an agony of pleading is heard beseeching that "the innocent" may be spared. He proclaims who are the innocent (so far, at all events, as his act is concerned); he begs that the guilty one may suffer, and proposes himself and his father's house as the justly designated resource for sacrifice. 'l'he "altar and the wood," ay, and the knife too, are there, and they shall not want the sacrifice. It seems pos- i;ible, probable, that not merely (1) David's offer of himself for the object of punishment, but (2) the very fact of his idea and suggestion of submitting to a punishment, all equivalent to sacrifice, was acceptable to God. David's importunate expostulation, inter- cession, prayer-three in one-contain implicitly the principle of sacrifice. And it is observable that it is from that moment that David is authorized, and indeed ordered, to seek a place of sacrifice, and to erect an altar of sacrifice. Thus in the struggle to purge himself as far as possible of his offence, and at least to extricate his people from the fierceness of plague and suffering, he rises to this point of ~iew, to entreat t?at on him- self and his father's house may be concentrated the pumshrnent now falling far and wide on a nation. IV, THE RESULTS TO WHICH ONE MAN'S BIN AND AN WMENSITY OF CONSEQUENT SUFFERING WERE NOW OVERRULED, (Vers. 26-30.) Some of these results were of special significance in the then time of day, and for the people of Israel. Others are ol significance for all ages. 1. For the thousandth time were shown forth these things -the loving fatherly heart of God, the hand that forbore, the yearning pity that " repented" because of its own tenderness of even the most deserved chastisement. Touching indeed is the language of ver. 15. So in older time the Lord himself to the angel, and the angel to Abraham, had cried," Forbear; it is enough." But not so when that dreader scene gathered in its fulness over Jerusalem. Though twelve legions of OH. XXL 1-30.] THE FIBS1' BOOK OF THE CHRO~ICLES. 33ii