The book of Samuel closes the way it began, with a prayer in its opening chapters and a costly sacrifice in its last. In between lies a lifetime: Hannah's barren longing, Saul's rise and ruin, David's climb from shepherd boy to king and his long fall from that height. It is fitting that the book ends with David's last recorded sin and not his greatest triumph, because that is the honesty this book has practiced from its first page.
Chronicles says Satan incited David to number Israel's fighting men (1 Chronicles 21:1). Samuel says the LORD's anger did. Both are true in the way Job's story is true: God permits and overrules what he did not author, using even an enemy's temptation to expose what was already in David's heart. Joab sees it first and tries to stop him: 3"why does my lord the king delight in this thing?" David wants to know how much strength is now his, and the answer is 800,000 swordsmen in Israel and 500,000 in Judah (verse 9). It is the old temptation in a census taker's clothes, trusting the size of an army more than the God who fought every one of David's real battles.
David's heart convicts him before any prophet has to: 10"I have sinned greatly in what I have done." There is no excuse, which is the pattern this book has taught us to recognize as David's own, distinct from Saul's self-justification. When Gad offers a choice of three punishments, David answers: 14"Let us fall into the hand of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man." Given a choice between severity from a merciful God and severity from anyone else, David does not hesitate.
Seventy thousand die anyway, and when the destroying angel's hand reaches toward Jerusalem, David sees what his pride cost: 17"these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand be against me and against my father's house." A true shepherd would rather absorb the cost meant for his flock than let one more of them suffer for what he alone did. David finally offers what his sin never cost him until now: himself, in his people's place.
The plague stops at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, and David goes to buy it. Araunah offers everything free, land and oxen and wood. David refuses, saying he will not offer burnt offerings that cost him nothing. A sacrifice that costs the giver nothing was never his to give. So he pays fifty shekels of silver for ground that will become the site of Solomon's temple (2 Chronicles 3:1).
That temple hill is the Mount Moriah of Abraham's story, where Abraham bound his beloved son and found a ram caught in a thicket in his place (Genesis 22:2, 13). On that same hill David offers himself in his people's place and finds that a plague simply stops. Centuries later, on a hill not far from here, a greater son of David would find no ram waiting. He would be the ram, the sacrifice that finally cost everything, so that every plague sin has earned might stop there for anyone who calls on his name.
The book ends on a hill purchased at a price, an altar built, and a plague averted, with a promise unfolding far past anything David could see.
Prayer
Father, thank you for David's honesty here at the very end, naming his pride and choosing to fall into your merciful hand. Thank you for teaching us, through his costly purchase, that worship which costs us nothing was never worship. And thank you that on this same hill, centuries later, you provided what David's sacrifice could not, a Son who was himself the offering, so that every plague our sin deserves has been fully stopped. In Jesus' name, amen.