These chapters explain the incident where God makes David choose between three evils….

1Ch 21v 1 starts: “Now Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel.”

The concept that Satan moves against Israel by moving David, and by moving him to number Israel, is interesting. Much of the Old Testament is about counting. Much of Leviticus is about the numbers of the Israelites.

Maybe David became obsessed with the numbers of his subjects. Certainly when we become obsessed with numbers we can quickly and easily become obsessed with worldly things.

So this is when God tells David he has a choice between drought for three years, falling into the hands of man for three months or for three days the sword of the Lord…David says he’d rather fall into the hands of the Lord. Actually he should have said he’d rather the Israelites fell into the hands of the Lord, for it is his people who die, 70,000 men fell quickly.

David and his elders put on sackcloth as the plague heads for Jerusalem, and God said to the destroying angel “It is enough…”

Interesting chronology in the story too, because God has already told his angel to stop before David pleads: “I am the one who has sinned … but what have they done?”

So the death stops in the middle of Ornan’s threshing floor (Ornan cooly continued his threshing even while standing underneath the visible sword-wielding angel) and David buys the property and establishes it as a place to worship God.

Dear God, Thank you for my faith. Please help me nurture it, and plant seeds from it in other hearts starting with my children. Please help me help my husband tend his heart too. Watch over the hearts of my uncle M, as well as my father, as they continue to deal with their grief. Thank you for my brother and sister. Thank you for K and J, who do their best to spread your word. Please watch over their hearts too. Please forgive me my sin, and show me your path for me. In Jesus’ name, Amen