2 Samuel 24:1 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And again After the former tokens of his anger, such as the three years' famine, mentioned chap. 21. The anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel For their sins, and on account of the following action of David. The anger of the Lord, it must be well observed, was not the cause of David's sin, nor of the sins of the people; for God cannot be the author of sin; but David's sin and the sins of Israel were the cause of God's anger. And he moved David against them The reader must observe that, as there is no nominative case before the verb here, in the original, to express who moved David, the most strict rendering of the clause would be, There was who moved David against them, &c. By our version, the reader is led to suppose that the Lord, mentioned in the foregoing part of the sentence, moved David to commit this sin of numbering the people. But this is not only quite contrary to the nature and attributes of God, but to what we are expressly told 1 Chronicles 21:1, where we learn that it was Satan, and not the Lord, that moved David to do this. Here then we have a very remarkable instance, which cannot be too much regarded, to warn us against building any particular doctrine, or belief, on certain particular, detached expressions or passages of Scripture, not in harmony with the general tenor of God's oracles; especially such doctrines as are entirely opposite to the essential nature or attributes of God. For had not this fact of David's numbering the people been related, through the care of divine providence, by another sacred writer, who entirely clears God from having any concern in moving David to sin, it might have been concluded from the passage before us that God impelled David to this act; and, consequently, that it is consistent with the nature and government of God to excite the human mind to sinful acts: than which there can scarce be any thing more impious imagined. And therefore we may plainly see from hence, that we are not to form our notions from particular passages or expressions of the Holy Scriptures, but from the general tenor of them.