Our minds tend to invert the Ten Commandments, considering the latter half of the list weightier than the first. God disagrees. Our humble worship is the starting point for a moral life, and false worship is the most heinous error.

What was David’s worst sin? Every Sunday School child knows the answer to that question: his adultery with Bathsheba^[1] and murder of her husband Uriah (2 Sam. 11-12).

There’s no doubt that David’s double sin against Bathsheba and Uriah is heinous. Following David’s sin, his family begins to implode. David’s son Amnon rapes his daughter, Tamar, Absalom murders Amnon in response and then attempts to overthrow his father and is ultimately killed. David’s sin was a direct violation of two of the most sacred moral laws: adultery and murder, and his family or reign would never be the same.

But is it possible that as heinous as this sin was, it wasn’t his worst sin? I think so. It appears as though God views David taking the census (1 Chron 21, 2 Sam 24) as more egregious. How could taking a census possibly be worse than adultery and murder? Let’s consider.

Following God bringing about peace in Israel, David orders a census of the men in Israel capable of fighting. In 1 Chronicles we read:

Then Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel. ²So David said to Joab and the commanders of the army, “Go, number Israel, from Beersheba to Dan, and bring me a report, that I may know their number.” ³But Joab said, “May the Lord add to his people a hundred times as many as they are! Are they not, my lord the king, all of them my lord’s servants? Why then should my lord require this? Why should it be a cause of guilt for Israel?”

In 2 Samuel 24, we read a parallel account, which shockingly begins, “Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, ‘Go, number Israel and Judah’” (2 Sam. 24:1). In the account in Chronicles, it is Satan who incites David to number Israel. In the Samuel account, it is God who incites David against the Israelites. This is the mystery of the sovereignty of God. Because of Israel’s sin, God is going to use David’s sin to bring discipline upon Israel. At the same time, Satan incites David to sin (not knowing God has purposes for David’s sin—for David and for Israel).

Unlike David’s sin against Bathsheba and Uriah, where no one dares challenge the king’s malevolent desires, Joab dares to question David. Joab likely has Moses’s warning to God’s people in his heart:

¹⁴“When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’ ¹⁵you may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. ¹⁶Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall never return that way again.’ (Deut. 17:14-16)

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