WORD STUDY – COST  חנמ

I Chronicles 21:24: “And King David said to Ornan, Nay but I will verily buy it for the full price, for I will not take that which is thine for the Lord nor offer burnt offerings without a cost.”

I don’t know about you, but I tend to interpret Scripture many times in light of personal experience. With recent events in my life and numbering my years at 67, I am beginning to see this story of David taking a census in a much different light.

We really can’t be sure why the census taken by David was such a gross sin, but we can speculate. It has been assumed by commentators that David numbered the people to determine his military strength based upon Numbers 1:1-3 and Exodus 30:12. But ther word “number” in these verses is paqad which means to muster or review. But in I Chronicles 21:24 the word used for number is manah which means to separate. David ordered this census to separate something or some people.

Joab, David’s general, had ten cat fits over the idea of taking a census or numbering the people. He called it an abomination unto the Lord. Now I ask you, since when is Joab so holy and spiritual? He is depicted as a ruthless killer, killing Abner and Amasa and never questioning David’s order to have Uriah murdered. He welded great power after the death of David and was described as a king maker. So why should a little thing like taking a census suddenly strike his conscience?

Also, David was an old man at this time. He knew his kingdom was going to be passed on to one of his sons. There was no real outside threat to the kingdom at this time. This was one of the few times Israel was at peace. There was, however, a very real threat to the kingdom internally. There was still a lot of hidden resentment over the fact that the House of Saul was displaced by the House of David.

David was keenly aware of this resentment and it bothered him. After a lifetime of service to his people there were still people who had a very poor opinion of him. David took this census because “he wanted to know” (verse 2). What did he want to know? It appears he wanted to know who was willing to pick up a sword and fight for him and who would not. Joab came unglued over this census because it would reveal the true strength of the fifth column or those who were plotting to restore the House of Saul and that could encourage those plotting against the house of David if word got out just how strong their numbers were. Then again maybe it was something else.

There are two other clues to the nature of this story. The other clue is found in verse 17 where David admits that the punishment was not for the numbering but for his personal sin behind his reason for the numbering. Perhaps the 70,000 men who died in the plague were part of the fifth column and David realized these people were dying because they didn’t like him. Just a thought but David did realize the true nature of his sin and that starts to come into focus in verse 24 with the word “cost.’ First let me digress with a little historical background.

David was instructed by an angel to offer a burnt offering on the threshing floor owned by a Jebusite named Ornan. A Jebusite was an ethnic group of the Hittites and his Ugaritic name would have been Araunah which means “Lord” which would suggest that he was the Patriarch of his people. The Jebusites were not supposed to be living in this area to begin with, they were to have been destroyed by Joshua, who failed to carry out God’s orders in this respect. The Jebusites were assimilated into the culture of the Hebrews and even achieved some key positions like Uriah the Hittite who married Bathsheba a Hebrew woman. It is interesting that Uriah was one of the “thirty” elite guards and Bathsheba’s father was Eliam also one of the “thirty” who was the son of Ahitophel, one of David’s chief advisors. My point is that the Hittites assumed key positions and knowledge in the kingdom and they were not Hebrews and should not have been in the kingdom in the first place. The fact that Ornan and his four sons hid themselves when they saw the angel and that David had to offer a sacrifice on the land of Ornan and Ornan,, a powerful man to begin with, practically begged David to take the land and anything he needed at no cost, and that the 70,000 who died were along the coastal regions which were highly populated by Hittites, would suggest that maybe what was happening was a purging of illegal immigrants or maybe in some way David was again trying to cover up his sin in having Uriah killed. Just a thought.

However, one thing that is agreed upon by most commentators is that David’s sin was one of pride. David still cared what people thought of him. Whether the census was to determine who liked him or who did not, or to purge the land of Uriah’s people who probably by this time suspected him of killing off their hero Uriah, or just for David to glory in his own power, one thing stands out – he cared what people thought of him and this totally cut him off from God and God’s protecting hand on the nation. We see the enemy was behind this whole thing (verse 1) and he brought about a sin of pride and selfish motives that would cause God to remove his hand of protection around the nation so he could pull off one of three disasters.

Now the last clue as to the purpose behind this story is found in the word cost. David paid Ornan because he did not want to offer a sacrifice without cost. This is a little odd because David, as a king, could have just declared eminent domain and taken the land from Ornan who, as a Jebusite really had no right to the land in the first place. He didn’t even have to do that as Ornan offered it to him free of charge. Thirdly, money was no object for David, he was one of the richest men in the world. The “cost” would set David back no further than Bill Gates personal electric bill.

The word cost is chanam which is a sacrifice of love. Sort of like O’Henry’s story “The Gift of the Magi” where two young lovers sold their most precious possession to purchase each other a gift. When David used the word chanam he was saying that his offering to God was not an appeasement, not an effort to stave off a punishment, but a demonstration of his love for God. A demonstration that God meant more to him than what other people thought of him. That is what is embodied in chanam that is an offering with a cost. God’s response was to send fire from heaven to consume the offering. Kind of like the Hebrew word ra’ah which is a consuming fire or passion. God demonstrated his consuming passion for David as David demonstrated the same for his God.

I can’t be critical of David for now that I am 67 years old and take stock of all those years, I find, like David, I still care what people think. But then I realize in that time I have so grown to love God that He means more to me than anything, more than I could possibly show. Or maybe I could like David offering a chanam to God.

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Clyde and Laura