NOTES for Sa2 24:10
In traditional societies people are usually very cautious, and more often openly negative, about all kinds of attempts at censuses, passport systems, and every other form of state registration of the population or its property. This is not surprising: in such a society there are its own, usually communal, forms and methods of accounting and control. Bearers of a traditionalist mentality regard every kind of innovation in this sphere as an attempt to deprive them of their former freedom and subject them to the power of certain structures, almost always perceived as something alien or directly hostile.
The attitude toward a census in David's time could hardly have been different. Indeed, Jewish society under David was still fully patriarchal, just as the state itself was. The king relied in governing the state on traditional tribal institutions such as the council of elders and the popular assembly. David, of course, had his own circle of close associates and his own military 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 result of Solomon's reforms. And the spiritual leaders 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 there was another, properly spiritual dimension to this census undertaking. Any census is carried out in order to make governing a country more effective. To count everyone so that people can be disposed of more easily, so that it will be easier to manipulate them.
Understood this way, the census was undoubtedly a step toward strengthening that earthly statehood which is always hostile to God as such, by its very nature. Left to itself, every statehood sooner or later turns into another Tower of Babel, whose end is predetermined by its own nature. And therefore every step toward 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 will no longer be able to live normally. In David's case there was plainly nothing of the kind: the census was done simply to sum up the path already traveled. It could quite well have been avoided. And David, having already given the order for the census, almost immediately understood what step he had taken and 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: for he always remained first of all a prophet, a man of God, and only then a king, politician, and warrior.