Angel of 2nd Samuel 24

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We have this idea that God in the Torah is different from Yeshua in the New Testament but this is not true. God doesn’t change and neither does human nature. God has the same toolkit to deal with defiant and unrepentant hearts now that He did when He confronted King David’s defiant census. Have our hearts and ears become hardened because of our false impression of Yeshua’s character?

Passages: 2nd Sam. 24:15-25; 1st Chron. 21:14-30; Ex. 12:23,29; Num. 11:1-35,14:1-44; Num. 16.; Num. 21; 2 Kings 19:35; 1st Cor. 10:1-13; Heb. 11:28; Rev. 9:1-12

As a consequence of calling for a census of Israel’s fighting age men, God gives David a choice of punishments, none of them particularly pleasant. David chose a three-day pestilence, which was the quickest one. 

2nd Sam. 24:15 says, “So the LORD sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning until the appointed time, and seventy thousand men of the people from Dan to Beersheba died.” 

God sent a Destroying Angel out to inflict the plague on the people but God specifically commanded the Angel to stop his hand when he arrived at Mt. Moriah. God did not want any blood shed on His holy mountain. This is the same mountain where God stayed the hand of Abraham from slaying Isaac. God did not want human sacrifices, and certainly not on this special mountain. 

David meets the Angel on Mt. Moriah and buys the land from Araunah the Jebusite so he could establish an altar, make sacrifices on it and stop the plague. This purchase was important because this is the spot where Solomon later built a permanent temple to God. 

There’s question about who or what prompted David to commit the census sin that brought about this event that leads David to purchase the land that God’s future temple will sit. One account says that it was haSatan who prompted David’s sin and another account says that God Himself prompted this sin. 

God could have just instructed Gad, the prophet to compel David to go to this place and purchase the land but there’s no guarantee that David would have responded the way God needed him to respond but sending an Angel certainly got David’s attention. 

This Angel was called out at various times in Israel’s history to correct either the people of Israel or Israel’s enemies with death. The first recorded instance is when the Angel of the Lord went through Egypt and destroyed the firstborn of the people and the livestock as a response to Pharaoh’s hard, defiant heart. The Angel was also called upon by the Lord to punish the Israelites with death several times throughout their wilderness wanderings, particularly when they would complain against Moses and God and conspired to go back to Egypt.

In every instance in Torah where the people were punished with instant death, either through a plague, by “fire,” snake bites or swallowing earth was a direct response to defiance and a complaining spirit in the people.

Defiance and complaining are the same to God. What makes us complain? Lack of trust in God and defiance of God’s requests to us. 

Why did God send a plague in this particular case, if the sole purpose of the plague was to punish David for calling a census, sending the Destroying Angel seems like overkill. David committed far worse sins and no plagues resulted from it.

If the problem was just David’s hardened heart, the Angel would have destroyed David along but 70,000 people were killed by the Angel in this case. There must have been a deeper spiritual problem in Israel for God to send this particular angel to deal with it. The people of Israel during this time were already dabbling in idolatry, which is in direct defiance of God’s instruction to not learn the worship practices of the people who were in the land before them. 

Tragic deaths, whether this case or Sept. 11, 2001, tornadoes, etc. are supposed to provoke soul-searching among the survivors to repent from their defiance of God and repent. When the people are too hard of heart to repent from their defiance, God has to continue His warnings until we respond appropriately. 

 Reader/Speaker: Daniel Agee. Summary: Tammy Quackenbush.