Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Samuel 23-24.

I am not sure when relative to the other things which happened during David’s reign the things in today’s passage occurred.  It begins by recounting David’s last words.  I will state that I am unsure if we are meant to understand these to be the last words he spoke before he died, or a statement David desired to be repeated after his death about his life.  The passage goes on to recount some of the exploits of David’s mightiest warriors and then lists the name of those warriors.  Finally, the passage contains the account of David’s census and the plague which followed.  It tells us that this plague led to David building an altar where Solomon would later build the temple.  Interestingly, it contains what at first appear to be two different accounts about how the plague ended.  First, it says that as the angel delivering the plague was about to strike Jerusalem God commanded it to stop.  Second, it says that Gad told David to build an altar at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, the place where it first said the angel was when God commanded it to stop.  In the second part it tells us that God stopped the plague after David offered sacrifices there.  After giving it some thought, I think we are supposed to see these two things as being together.  David built the altar at the place he saw the angel and offered sacrifices which led God to stop it from continuing to spread the plague, and God stopped the plague at that place so that David would know where to build the altar.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.