Main news for 20 February 2018

In traditional societies people usually treat every kind of attempt at a census, passportization, and all other forms of state registration of the population or its property very cautiously, and more often directly negatively. This is not surprising: in such a society there are its own, usually communal, forms and methods of accounting and control. And the bearers of a traditionalist mentality look on all kinds of innovations in this area as an attempt to deprive them of their former freedom and subject them to the authority of certain structures, almost always perceived as something alien or directly hostile.

The attitude toward the census in David's time could hardly have been different. Indeed, Hebrew society under David was still quite patriarchal, as was the state itself. In governing the state, the king relied on traditional tribal institutions such as the council of elders and the popular assembly. David, of course, had his own circle of intimates and his own retinue, but neither a regular bureaucratic apparatus nor a regular army yet existed in his state.

Both appeared in Israel only during the reign of David's son Solomon as a consequence of Solomon's reforms. And the spiritual leaders who stood at the head of the prophetic movement also viewed the census negatively: they always supported the traditional way of life and ancient patriarchal customs. But in this undertaking with the census there was also another, properly spiritual dimension. Any census is carried out in order to make governing the country more effective. To count everyone so that it is easier to dispose of people, easier to manipulate them.

Understood in this way, the census was an undoubted step toward strengthening that earthly statehood which is always hostile to God as such, in its very essence. Left to itself, every statehood sooner or later turns into another Tower of Babel, whose end is predetermined by its very nature. Therefore every step on the path to strengthening statehood should be taken only when it is absolutely necessary, when there is simply no other way out.

When without such a step the people cannot continue living normally. In David's case there was clearly nothing of the kind: the census was carried out simply in order to sum up the path that had been traveled. It was quite possible to do without it. And David, having already given the order for the census, almost immediately understood what step he had taken, what spiritual process he had set in motion. As a spiritually sensitive person, he could not fail to understand this. And having understood, he could not fail to repent of what he had done: after all, he always remained first of all a prophet, a man of God, and only then a king, politician, and warrior.