Last Years of David
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therefore,” said the prophet, “advise thyself what word I shall bring
again to Him that sent me.”
The king’s answer was, “I am in a great strait: let us fall now into
the hand of the Lord; for His mercies are great: and let me not fall into
the hand of man.”
The land was smitten with pestilence, which destroyed seventy
thousand in Israel. The scourge had not yet entered the capital, when
“David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the Lord stand between
the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched
out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders of Israel, who were
clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces.” The king pleaded with
God in behalf of Israel: “Is it not I that commanded the people to be
numbered? even I it is that have sinned and done evil indeed; but as
for these sheep, what have they done? let Thine hand, I pray Thee, O
Lord my God, be on me, and on my father’s house; but not on Thy
people, that they should be plagued.”
The taking of the census had caused disaffection among the people;
yet they had themselves cherished the same sins that prompted David’s
action. As the Lord through Absalom’s sin visited judgment upon
David, so through David’s error he punished the sins of Israel.
The destroying angel had stayed his course outside Jerusalem.
He stood upon Mount Moriah, “in the threshing floor of Ornan the
Jebusite.” Directed by the prophet, David went to the mountain, and
there built an altar to the Lord, “and offered burnt offerings and peace
offerings, and called upon the Lord; and He answered him from heaven
by fire upon the altar of burnt offering.” “So the Lord was entreated
for the land, and the plague was stayed from Israel.”
The spot upon which the altar was erected, henceforth ever to be
regarded as holy ground, was tendered to the king by Ornan as a gift.
But the king declined thus to receive it. “I will verily buy it for the
full price,” he said; “for I will not take that which is thine for the Lord,
nor offer burnt offerings without cost. So David gave to Ornan for the
place six hundred shekels of gold by weight.” This spot, memorable
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as the place where Abraham had built the altar to offer up his son, and
now hallowed by this great deliverance, was afterward chosen as the
site of the temple erected by Solomon.
Still another shadow was to gather over the last years of David. He
had reached the age of threescore and ten. The hardships and exposures