“Take a census of Israel”
Then Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.… Why does my lord want to do this? Why should he bring guilt on Israel? (1 Chronicles 21:1–3 BSB)
What it sounds like today
God punishing David harshly just for taking a headcount.
The cultural key
Modern readers are baffled that a simple census could be a grave sin. But counting the army carried freight. A census was the machinery of conscription and taxation; it implicitly claimed the people as the crown's possession rather than the LORD's; and it usually signaled reliance on military strength, sizing up the troops instead of trusting God. The Law even required that whenever the people were numbered, each man pay a 'ransom' for his life so that 'no plague will come on them' (Exodus 30:12), a ransom David's census skips, which is exactly why a plague follows. Joab, no theologian, senses the danger instantly and begs David to drop it. The sin is not the arithmetic but the pride and self-reliance the counting expresses.
Recovered meaning
David's census is sinful because numbering the army meant trusting in troop strength and treating the people as royal property, and it bypassed the ransom the Law demanded for a headcount. Joab feels the guilt at once; the plague follows.