Wednesday, December 8, 2021

Douglas Farrow on 2 Samuel 24:1 and 1 Chronicles 21:1

 

What the one holding to biblical infallibility is clearly committed to is examination of every passage with a view to allowing the author to direct his thoughts with entire freedom. Every constituent message (which may or may not correspond to a simple statement of some kind) must be obediently received with that end in view, that is, according to the service it was intended to have in the development of the passage itself. This is the central qualification I have been emphasizing as the hermeneutical answer to much of the difficulty in the inerrancy debate. Perhaps returning to the problem of David’s census . . .I can illustrate the two-way implications of this qualification: “Again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and he incited David against them . . .” contains two related messages for the information and reflection of the reader as he approaches the story to follow. So does the following statement, which introduces the parallel account: “Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.” This apparent conflict cannot be ignored, for it cannot be maintained that the element of conflict here is incidental to the purpose of the statements. (Douglas Farrow, The Word of Truth and Disputes About Words [Winona Lake, Ind.: Carpenter Books, 1987], 209-10)

 

In the footnote to the above, Farrow wrote:

 

Cf. 2 Sam 24:1 and 1 Chr 21:1. Those who jump quickly to the conclusion that these statements are simply contradictory—and relatively unimportant—introductions to duplicate accounts of the incident show the same sort of hermeneutical insensitivity as the inerrantists they criticize. By examining other differences as well, the two narratives (beginning with their introductions) will be seen to offer deliberately different, but complementary, perspectives, in keeping with the different themes that gave both books a position in the canon despite the repetitious nature of the Chronicles. Where 2 Samuel is concerned with the relevant of this incident to the dialectic of judgment and forgiveness, blessing and curse, all taking place within the providential purposes of God, 1 Chronicles shows more attention to the evil character of the act itself, perhaps in keeping with the chronicler’s interest in documenting the relationship between action and effect. In any event, this certainly is not the only place where the activities of God and Satan are shown to have intersected—no small point for the penetration of theological thought into the nature of reality in “this present evil age”—and both points of view are indeed significant. (Ibid., 210 n. 30)