So Gad came to David, and told him, saying, “Shall seven years of famine come to you in your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ pestilence in your land? Now answer, and consider what answer I shall return to him who sent me.”
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 13. Seven. Par. three; which makes the contrast more striking. Bible.—The Septuagint and some copies of the Arab. version, have the latter number. Calmet.—Gad might first propose seven, and then reduce it to three. Menochius.—But did the prophet deliver the message twice? Usher pleads for the truth of both numbers, though he says, “It was always my opinion, that the Hebrew copy of the Old Testament has been no less exposed to the errors of writers, than that of the New, and all other books.” Synt. p. 219. Boxtorf also declares, “it is better piously to believe that both is right.” Why? “because both is written.” Antic. p. 401 and 420! The contradiction, in fact, seems to have been occasion by the mistake of a numeral letter, g (3) for z (7.) Kennicott.—Usher, Malvenda, and so forth adopt an hypothesis, beautiful enough, but destitute of proof, when they say that God proposed three years in punishment of David’s criminal curiosity. But as that famine would have immediately followed the three years’ scarcity, already endured, (Calmet. 21) and during the seventh, or sabbatical year, nothing could be reaped, the famine would thus rage for seven years. Calmet.—Salien places the 62nd sabbatical year at this very time, A. 3017, and terminates the famine occasioned by the cruel injustice of Saul, A. 1013, which cannot agree with the aforesaid system. Bible.