The Bible Study Podcast, episode 543. Today, the Bible Study podcast continues the study of the

kings of Israel and Judah with 2nd Samuel 24. Welcome to the Bible study podcast. I'm your

host, Chris Christensen. We are actually finishing the book of Second Samuel today. This is half the way through our journey, roughly in terms of number of books. This study is going to be First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings. I could also do First and Second Chronicles, but I think I at least will be sick of the Kings by that point.

And First and Second Chronicles retells the story of First and Second Kings.

So if you want to read that in parallel, feel free to do that.

But here we wrap up one of the last chapters that wraps up the kingship of David.

We're going to have David still as king next chapter as we start First Kings, but you'll see that's where it will end. Again, the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he incited

David against them, saying, go and take a census of Israel and Judah. So the king said to Joab

and the army commanders with him, go throughout the tribes of Israel from Dan to Bershiba

and enroll the fighting men so that I may know how many there are. But Joab replied to the king,

may the Lord your God multiply the thrones a hundred times over, and may the eyes of the Lord

the king see it, but why does my Lord the king want to do such a thing?

The king's word, however, overruled Joab and the army commanders so that they left the presence of the king to enroll the fighting men of Israel.

After crossing the Jordan, they camped near Ero, south of the town in the gorge, and then went through Gadd and onto Jazeer.

They went to Gilead and the regions of Tatim Hocci and on to Danjohn and around toward Sidon. Then they went toward the fortress of Tyre and all the towns of the Hivites and the

Canaanites. Finally they went on to Bershiba in the Negev of Judah.

After they'd gone through the entire land, they came back to Jerusalem at the end of nine months

and 20 days. Joab reported the number of the fighting men to the king. In Israel, there were

800,000 able-bodied men who could handle a sword, and in Judah, 500,000.

I'm going to pause here for a second because we have to make sure we understand what's going on so far.

So they're doing a census, and census is something that is quite common to us.

I know that here in the United States, we do a census every 10 years, and we count everybody,

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