Joab the son of Zeruiah began. — Or, had begun. This clearly refers to 1 Chronicles 21:6. Joab omitted to number Levi and Benjamin.
Because there fell wrath for it. — The same phrase recurs in 2 Chronicles 19:10; 2 Chronicles 24:18. (Comp. for the fact, 1 Chronicles 21:7, seq.) The sense of the Hebrew may be brought out better thus: “Joab son of Zeruiah had begun to number, without finishing; and there fell,” &c.
Neither was the number put in the account of the chronicles of king David. — Literally, and the number came not up (‘âlâh), was not entered. (Comp. 1 Kings 9:21; 2 Chronicles 20:34.) The number which Joab ascertained was not recorded, as might have been expected, in the official annals of the reign, here designated as “the account of the chronicles of king David” (mispar dibrê ha-yâmîm). It is implied that the chronicler had these annals before him in some form or other, probably as a section of the “History of the Kings of Judah and Israel,” and that he found the lists of this chapter in that source. Those of 1 Chronicles 23-26 may have been derived from the same authority. In 2 Kings 12:20; 2 Kings 13:8; 2 Kings 13:12, and all similar instances, the phrase for “book of the Chronicles” is not mispar, but sçpher dibrê ha-yâmîm. Some suppose that the text here should be altered accordingly; others would render mispar dibrê ha-yâmîm, “the statistical section of the annals.” But mispar in Judges 7:15 means the telling or relation of a dream, and the transition from such a sense to that of written relation is easy. The phrase rendered “Chronicles” is the same as the Hebrew title of these books.