034. Prayer Of David After His Transgression In Numbering Israel And Judah.

Prayer Of David After His Transgression In Numbering Israel And Judah. The Prayer as recorded.—2 Samuel 24:10. The Lord’s Answer.—2 Samuel 24:11-16. When we consider the character of David, and hear him spoken of as “the man after God’s own heart,” we are apt to forget he was, like ourselves, human and imperfect. In some of the acts of David’s life, even after his conversion, there is sad evidence of natural corruption; pride, vanity, and deceit are still in his heart. We know these hateful passions were not nourished by him, and cannot be by one who, like him, daily waits on his God. This is an encouragement to Christians struggling with the deep-rooted malady in their own hearts, and ought to fill them with a joyful hope that at the last they will come off more than “conquerors through him who loved them. It should awaken for the whole world that loving charity which “thinketh no evil,” and though all about us there are wandering children from the fold of God, yet they may, like David, be struggling in prayer, their lives be a warfare against sin and Satan, and theirs that sorrow for which nothing but prayer, deep and fervent, is an antidote. Now what was the sin David committed in numbering the people? Some have thought it a contempt of God’s promise that they should be innumerable, and that, as in the days of Moses, he should have been expressly commanded by God to do this; but we think it an evidence of pride in David.

Elated with the prosperity and extent of his dominions, he evinced a complacency natural to those who have been eminently successful; there seems to be also an ambitious curiosity to discover how many of his people were fit for service; and with the like feeling, indulged by many an aged man, after a life of prosperity and success, he would have it said he had left a populous and flourishing kingdom to posterity. But these feelings of David called forth the displeasure of his God; pride and worldly ambition were still in his heart, and by chastisement from the Lord they must be subdued.