9 And Jehovah spoke to Gad, David's seer, saying, 10 Go and speak to David saying, Thus saith Jehovah: I offer thee three [things]; choose one of them, that I may do it unto thee. 11 And Gad came to David, and said to him, Thus saith Jehovah: 12 Choose thee, either three years of famine, or three months to be destroyed before thine adversaries while that the sword of thine enemies overtaketh thee, or three days the sword of Jehovah and the pestilence in the land, and the angel of Jehovah destroying through all the borders of Israel. And now consider what word I shall bring again to him that sent me. 13 And David said to Gad, I am in a great strait: let me fall, I pray thee, into the hand of Jehovah, for his mercies are very great; but let me not fall into the hand of man. 14 And Jehovah sent a pestilence upon Israel; and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men. 15 And God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it; and as he was destroying, Jehovah beheld, and he repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed, It is enough; withdraw now thine hand. And the angel of Jehovah stood by the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite. 16 And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of Jehovah stand between the earth and the heavens, and his sword drawn in his hand, stretched out over Jerusalem. And David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell on their faces. 17 And David said to God, Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered? It is I that have sinned and done evil; but these sheep, what have they done? Let thy hand, I pray thee, Jehovah my God, be on me and on my father's house; but not on thy people, that they should be smitten.
18 And the angel of Jehovah commanded Gad to say to David, that David should go up and rear an altar to Jehovah in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite. 19 And David went up at the saying of Gad, which he had spoken in the name of Jehovah.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on 1 Chronicles 21:9-19
Chapter Contents
David's numbering the people.
No mention is made in this book of David's sin in the matter of Uriah, neither of the troubles that followed it: they had no needful connexion with the subjects here noted. But David's sin, in numbering the people, is related: in the atonement made for that sin, there was notice of the place on which the temple should be built. The command to David to build an altar, was a blessed token of reconciliation. God testified his acceptance of David's offerings on this altar. Thus Christ was made sin, and a curse for us; it pleased the Lord to bruise him, that through him, God might be to us, not a consuming Fire, but a reconciled God. It is good to continue attendance on those ordinances in which we have experienced the tokens of God's presence, and have found that he is with us of a truth. Here God graciously met me, therefore I will still expect to meet him.