Albert Barnes Commentary 1 Chronicles 21

As the books of Scripture are arranged in this version, Satan is introduced to us by name here for the first time. He appears not merely as an “adversary” who seeks to injure humanity from without, but as a Tempter able to ruin us by suggesting sinful acts and thoughts from within. From this perspective, the revelation of him here is the most advanced we find in the Old Testament.

The difficulty in reconciling the statement here that “Satan provoked David” with the one in 2 Samuel 24:1 that “the Lord moved David” is not serious. All temptation is permitted by God. When evil spirits tempt us, they do so by His permission (Job 1:12; Job 2:6; Luke 22:31). Therefore, if Satan provoked David to number the people, it was because God allowed it. And what God allows, He may be said to do. (Another view is maintained in the note on 2 Samuel 24:1).

In 2 Samuel 24:9, the numbers are different. The explanation given there is not as widely accepted as the theory that the numbers have been corrupted in one passage or the other (or possibly in both).

To omit the Levites would be to follow the precedent recorded in Numbers 1:47-49. The omission of Benjamin must be ascribed to Joab's determination to frustrate the king’s intention, through which he might hope to avert God’s wrath from the people.

And the angel of the Lord destroying... These words are not in Samuel, which presents the third alternative briefly. They prepare the way for the angelic appearance in 1 Chronicles 21:16, on which the author is about to lay so much stress.

Here a picture of awe-inspiring grandeur takes the place of the bare statement of the earlier historian in 2 Samuel 24:17. And here, as elsewhere, the author probably extracts from the ancient documents such circumstances as harmonize with his general plan. As the sanctity of the temple was among the points on which he was most anxious to lay stress, he gives in full all the miraculous circumstances attending this first designation of what became the temple site (marginal reference “k”) as a place “holy to the Lord.”

David and the elders ... clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces—These are facts additional to the narrative of Samuel, but they are natural in themselves and in harmony with that account. Similarly, the narrative in 1 Chronicles 21:20 is additional to the account in Samuel, but its parts are coherent, and there is no sufficient ground for suspecting it.