Go, number Israel from Beersheba even to Dan (2Samuel 24)

Once again, 2Samuel chapter 24 is almost certainly not chronological; this census was probably late in David's life, but not right at the end. Who tempted David to number Israel? As I mentioned in a previous chapter, there's no contradiction here if you understand the Jewish concept of Satan being the servant of God. God had a hand in this, but Satan did the actual tempting. Has God ever tempted anyone? While I think you can dismiss "lead us not into temptation" as a technicality, it leaves us with two verses to deal with, as I'm coming down on the side of "no". I think one of the hardest things in translation is the issue of how close in meaning the words "tempt" and "test" are. I don't know how this plays out in the Hebrew and Greek, but I suspect the line is blurry, especially when here we're comparing across languages. I guess the thing I'm left with is to say that taking the KJV literally, you would have to say there is a contradiction here. Is it OK to take a census? This is one where the answer is "it depends". It's generally understood (and it seems to be the case from context) that David took a census in order to find out how many fighting men he had, even though Israel was not at war. He either intended something that God disapproved of, or perhaps he was showing a lack of faith that God would protect him. Moses's censuses were for various reasons, and commanded by God, while Solomon's census was apparently of slaves to plan out a work project.

How many valiant men drew the sword in Israel and Judah as counted by Joab? Yes, this is contradictory, and I have no idea why. It's worth noting that while the SAB says these numbers are ridiculous, this is probably not active soldiers, but rather all men in Israel who could potentially serve in a battle. I already answered whether David sinned in 2Samuel chapter 22, where the answer was "yes". How many years of famine? Yes, a straight up contradiction.

Is God merciful? Wow, this is a deep question, and unfortunately highly subjective. I think it's most problematic when a number of verses say things like, "his mercy endureth forever." I think it can clearly be said that God's mercy is limited, which would contradict a claim like that. Are the claims that God is merciful opinion? I could claim that, but unfortunately, not only are many of these claims by prophets, but a handful are from God himself! I think the best I can say is that it's subjective, and a lot of people are going to find the verses in the "no" section to be rather convincing, but I would claim that in most of those cases it's clear from context that the things God did in them came after a great deal of mercy.

Does God repent? I actually addressed this extensively in Genesis chapter six, but it's worth revisiting. There are two different ideas embodied in the term "repent" that need to be delineated. One is the idea of changing one's mind about the rightness of a thing; the other is the idea of deciding to cease an action that one has been doing. The former is definitely something God does not do, while the latter is something God has done many times in the Bible. If one understands that this distinction exists, threre is no contradiction. How much did David pay for the threshing floor? Yes, a rather striking contradiction here.