The narrative recorded in 2 Samuel 24 and its parallel in 1 Chronicles 21 presents one of the most morally troubling episodes in the Hebrew Bible. According to the text, King David conducts a census of Israel's fighting men, and God responds by sending a plague that kills 70,000 people.1 What makes this account particularly disturbing is not merely the death toll, but the fundamental injustice at its core: the people who died had nothing to do with the census, yet they bore the full weight of divine punishment while David, the one who ordered the census, remained alive. Even David himself recognized this injustice, asking God:
"I have sinned, and I have done wickedly. But these sheep, what have they done?" 2 Samuel 24:17 (English Standard Version)2
The text offers no satisfactory answer.
What the text says
The narrative in 2 Samuel 24 opens with a striking statement:
"Again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, 'Go, number Israel and Judah.'" 2 Samuel 24:1 (English Standard Version)1
The Hebrew verb used here, wayyaset (from the root sut), means to incite, instigate, or move someone to action.3 The text explicitly states that God himself moved David to conduct the census that would serve as the pretext for punishing Israel. This creates an immediate moral problem: God incites an action and then punishes people for it.
David orders his commander Joab to count the fighting men of Israel. Remarkably, even Joab recognizes that something is wrong with this command. He responds:
"May the LORD your God add to the people a hundred times as many as they are, while the eyes of my lord the king still see it, but why does my lord the king delight in this thing?" 2 Samuel 24:3 (English Standard Version)4
Joab's objection suggests that even David's military commander understood the census to be problematic, yet the king's order prevailed.5 After nine months and twenty days of counting, Joab reports the results: 800,000 men of military age in Israel and 500,000 in Judah.1
Following the census, David's conscience strikes him. The text states:
"David's heart struck him after he had numbered the people. And David said to the LORD, 'I have sinned greatly in what I have done.'" 2 Samuel 24:10 (English Standard Version)1
David recognizes that he has done wrong and confesses his sin. But the punishment that follows falls not on David, but on the people of Israel who had no involvement in his decision.
The three punishment options
The morning after David's confession, the prophet Gad arrives with a message from God. He offers David a choice of three punishments: three years of famine in the land, three months of fleeing before his enemies, or three days of plague.6 This detail is significant: God offered David the choice of how the people would be punished. The citizens of Israel, who would bear the consequences, were never consulted.
David chooses the plague, reasoning:
"Let us fall into the hand of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man." 2 Samuel 24:14 (English Standard Version)7
David's preference for divine punishment over human pursuit was based on an assumption about God's mercy, yet the outcome that followed hardly demonstrated mercy toward the 70,000 who would die.8
The three punishment options offered to David6
| Option | Duration | Who suffers |
|---|---|---|
| Famine | Three years | All Israel |
| Fleeing enemies | Three months | David and armies |
| Plague | Three days | All Israel |
The text then records the outcome:
"So the LORD sent a pestilence on Israel from the morning until the appointed time. And there died of the people from Dan to Beersheba 70,000 men." 2 Samuel 24:15 (English Standard Version)9
The phrase "from Dan to Beersheba" is a merism indicating the entire geographical extent of Israel, from the northernmost to the southernmost regions.10 The death toll of 70,000 represents a catastrophic loss, a number that exceeds the casualties of many wars recorded in the Hebrew Bible.
The contradiction between accounts
The parallel account in 1 Chronicles 21 tells the same story with one crucial difference. Where 2 Samuel 24:1 states that "the LORD... incited David," 1 Chronicles 21:1 reads:
"Then Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel." 1 Chronicles 21:1 (English Standard Version)11
This represents one of the clearest contradictions in the Hebrew Bible. The same action, inciting David to take the census, is attributed to God in one account and to Satan in the other.
Biblical scholars have long recognized this discrepancy as evidence of theological development in ancient Israelite thought. The books of Samuel were likely composed during or shortly after the monarchy, while Chronicles was written in the post-exilic period, after Judah's return from Babylonian exile in the late sixth or fifth century BCE.12 During this intervening period, Israelite theology underwent significant changes, particularly regarding how evil and harmful actions could be attributed to God.
The earlier texts of the Hebrew Bible show fewer reservations about attributing harm and even deception directly to God. In 1 Samuel 16:14, God sends an "evil spirit" to torment Saul. In 1 Kings 22:23, God sends a "lying spirit" into the mouths of false prophets. But by the post-exilic period, there was greater theological discomfort with such attributions.13 The Chronicler, writing later, apparently could not accept the earlier text's claim that God directly incited David to sin, and so attributed the incitement to Satan instead.
This theological evolution reflects exposure to Zoroastrian dualism during the Babylonian exile and the development of a more systematic understanding of Satan as an adversarial figure.14 In earlier texts like Job, "the satan" (ha-satan) appears as a member of the divine council with a prosecutorial role, not yet the cosmic adversary of later Jewish and Christian thought.15 Chronicles' reworking of 2 Samuel 24 represents an important stage in the development of the Satan figure as an independent agent of evil.14
The moral problem
The fundamental moral problem in this narrative is collective punishment: 70,000 people died for something they did not do. The census was ordered by David. The people counted had no role in the decision. They did not consent to being numbered, they could not have refused, and they committed no transgression. Yet they bore the full weight of the punishment while David, the one who ordered the census, survived.
Even David recognized this injustice. When he saw the destroying angel over Jerusalem, he cried out:
"Behold, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly. But these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand be against me and against my father's house." 2 Samuel 24:17 (English Standard Version)2
David's plea explicitly acknowledges the innocence of the people. He calls them "sheep," a term emphasizing their lack of agency and culpability. He asks God to redirect the punishment to himself and his family, the actual guilty parties. The text records no divine response to this plea, no justification for why the innocent should suffer for the guilty.
The problem is compounded by the opening verse of the account. According to 2 Samuel 24:1, God himself incited David to take the census. This creates a structure of entrapment: God moves David to act, then punishes the people for David's action. If one follows the Chronicles account instead, the problem shifts but does not disappear. In that version, Satan incites David, but God still chooses to punish not David but the people for what David did under satanic influence.
What was wrong with the census?
The text never explicitly states what made David's census sinful, which has generated extensive discussion among interpreters. Several explanations have been proposed, none of which resolves the moral problem of collective punishment.
One interpretation focuses on Exodus 30:12, which prescribes that when a census is taken, each person counted must pay a half-shekel ransom for his life to the LORD, so that there will be no plague among them when you number them.16 Some scholars argue that David's sin was failing to collect this ransom money, which served a protective function against the inherent danger of census-taking.17 The half-shekel payment was understood to screen Israel from divine wrath, and its omission left the people vulnerable to plague.18
Another interpretation emphasizes the ancient Near Eastern belief that a king only had the right to count what belonged to him, and Israel belonged to God, not to David.5 By counting the people, David was implicitly claiming ownership of what was rightfully God's. This explanation frames the census as an act of pride or presumption, a failure to recognize divine sovereignty over Israel.
A third interpretation suggests that the census demonstrated a lack of trust in God. By counting his military forces, David was relying on human strength rather than divine protection, thereby showing a failure of faith.19 Joab's objection may reflect this concern: why does the king need to know how many soldiers he has when God has promised to multiply Israel?
Yet none of these explanations justifies punishing 70,000 uninvolved people. Whether David failed to collect ransom money, claimed divine prerogatives, or showed lack of faith, the ordinary Israelites who died had no part in these offenses. They were merely counted. The moral problem remains: the people suffered for something only their king did wrong.
The ethics of collective punishment
Collective punishment, the penalizing of a group for the actions of individuals within that group, is recognized in moral philosophy and international humanitarian law as fundamentally unjust.20 The Geneva Conventions explicitly prohibit collective punishment, holding that individuals may only be held liable for acts they themselves committed or to which they contributed.21 The moral principle underlying this prohibition is straightforward: punishment should be proportionate to guilt, and guilt requires personal culpability.
From a Kantian ethical perspective, collective punishment violates the categorical imperative by treating individuals as means to an end rather than as ends in themselves.20 Each of the 70,000 who died was used as an instrument for punishing David, their individual dignity and rights ignored. This stands in tension with claims that each person is made in God's image and possesses inherent worth.
Some defenders argue that the people of Israel were not truly innocent, that they too had sinned and deserved punishment. The text does state that "the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel" before mentioning the census.1 However, the punishment is explicitly linked to the census, not to any prior sins. The prophet Gad does not say God is punishing Israel for their wickedness; he says God is offering David a choice of punishments for "the sin of the census."6 If God was angry about prior sins, the text provides no enumeration of what those sins were or why the census should serve as the occasion for punishment.
Collective punishment in 2 Samuel 241, 9
Common theological defenses
Theologians and apologists have offered various defenses of this narrative. Examining these defenses reveals significant philosophical problems with each approach.
The divine sovereignty defense
The most common defense holds that God, as creator and sovereign, has the right to give and take life as He sees fit. Since God grants life, He may justly reclaim it. On this view, no creature can make moral demands of its Creator.22
This defense encounters the Euthyphro dilemma, articulated by Plato: is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?23 If actions are good simply because God performs them, then "good" becomes an empty term meaning only "whatever God does." Killing 70,000 innocent people becomes good by definition, and moral language loses all content.24 Divine command theory faces this objection directly: if God commanded collective punishment, would collective punishment be moral? Most theists recoil from this conclusion and insist that God would only command what is already good. But this response concedes that there must be some standard of goodness independent of God's commands, by which divine actions can be evaluated.24
The hidden sins defense
Some defenders argue that the people of Israel must have been guilty of sins not recorded in the text, and the census merely provided the occasion for their just punishment. On this view, the 70,000 were not truly innocent.
This defense is textually unsupported. David explicitly describes the people as sheep who have done nothing wrong.2 The narrative presents the punishment as connected to the census, not to unspecified prior sins. To claim that the victims must have deserved death for reasons not mentioned in the text is to argue from silence. It also renders the narrative incoherent: if God was punishing Israel for other sins, why offer David a choice of punishments for the census?
The corporate solidarity defense
Some interpreters appeal to ancient Israelite concepts of corporate solidarity, arguing that in the ancient world, the king and people were understood as a unified body. When the king sinned, the whole nation was implicated. Modern individualistic thinking, on this view, misunderstands the ancient context.
This defense explains the ancient worldview but does not justify it morally. The fact that ancient cultures practiced collective punishment does not make collective punishment just. Many ancient practices, including slavery and human sacrifice, are now recognized as immoral despite their historical prevalence. Understanding why ancient Israelites might have accepted this narrative is different from accepting its moral validity.
The mystery defense
Some defenders argue that God's ways are beyond human understanding and that we should not expect to comprehend divine justice. God chose not to explain His actions, and finite humans lack the perspective to evaluate infinite wisdom.
This defense amounts to abandoning moral evaluation entirely. If divine actions are beyond human moral comprehension, then calling God "good" or "just" becomes meaningless, since we cannot know what those words mean when applied to God. The mystery defense protects any action from criticism by placing it beyond evaluation, which proves too much: it would justify any atrocity if attributed to God.25
Theodicy and divine agency
The problem of theodicy, the philosophical attempt to reconcile evil and suffering with an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good God, becomes particularly acute in this narrative.25 Standard theodicies focus on explaining why God permits evil; this passage requires explaining why God perpetrates it. The suffering of the 70,000 is not something God allows; according to the text, it is something God directly causes.
The free will defense, which argues that God permits evil because free will is a greater good, does not apply here. The 70,000 who died did not exercise free will to do evil. They were struck down by divine plague for another person's decision. The soul-making theodicy, which suggests suffering builds character, cannot apply to those who died. They received no opportunity for growth or learning; they simply perished.
The narrative presents God as the direct agent of mass death. He offers David the choice of punishments. He sends the plague. He dispatches the destroying angel. Only when the angel reaches Jerusalem does God relent and stop the destruction.26 This is not passive permission of evil but active infliction of suffering on people the text itself characterizes as innocent.
The threshing floor resolution
The narrative concludes with David purchasing the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite and building an altar there. When David makes offerings, "the LORD responded to the plea for the land, and the plague was averted from Israel."27 This site would later become the location of Solomon's Temple, giving the narrative etiological significance in explaining why the temple was built where it was.28
The resolution does not undo the deaths or provide justice for those who died. The 70,000 remain dead. David, whose decision caused their deaths, lives to build an altar and die peacefully of old age. The narrative ends with worship and atonement, but only after a massacre of innocents. A promise of future blessing does not retroactively justify past violence against the uninvolved.
Moral implications
The narrative in 2 Samuel 24 presents a portrait of God that raises fundamental moral questions. According to the text, God incited David to take a census, then offered David a choice of how the people would be punished, then sent a plague that killed 70,000 people who had no part in David's decision. Even within the narrative, David recognizes that these "sheep" had done nothing wrong.
The contradiction between 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles indicates that even ancient biblical authors found the attribution of this incitement to God troubling. The Chronicler's revision, attributing the incitement to Satan, represents an attempt to preserve God from direct responsibility for inciting sin. But this revision does not solve the underlying problem: whoever incited David, God chose to punish the people for David's act.
One can read this narrative as ancient literature reflecting the theological assumptions of its time. One can read it as a story about the dangers of pride and the importance of trusting God rather than military might. What one cannot consistently maintain is that killing 70,000 innocent people to punish their king represents moral goodness in any recognizable sense. If collective punishment is wrong when humans do it, the question becomes whether it is acceptable when God does it, or whether the word "wrong" simply does not apply to divine actions.
The narrative forces a choice: either moral categories apply to God's actions, in which case killing innocents for another's sin appears unjust, or moral language becomes meaningless when applied to God, in which case calling God "good" or "just" conveys no real content. Neither option leaves traditional theism untroubled.