The Devil Made David Do It ... Or Did He? the Nature, Identity, And Literary Origins of the Satan in 1 Chronicles 21:1‪.‬

In 2 Samuel 24, King David commits one of his very few blunders as God's handpicked ruler of Israel and orders that a census be taken of the people. As a result of this royal faux pas, God sends a plague that wipes out much of Israel's population. (1) Of all of the perplexing facets of this story, the most intriguing and the most troubling is that the historian credits David's error and, by implication, the ensuing plague to none other than the deity, who is said to have incited David to order the census in the first place. On the whole, the Chronistic version of this story parallels its Deuteronomistic source. But in several instances the Chronicler deviates from the story as we have it in the MT of 2 Samuel. The most remarkable of these deviations is in the very first line of the account, in which a redactor attempts to shed light on the source of David's plan and Israel's troubles. 2 Samuel 24:1 reads, But the parallel account in 1 Chronicles (21:1) begins somewhat differently: