Psalms 30:6

6. In my prosperity I said Here is stated the moral cause of the personal and national affliction complained of in the psalm. From a comparison of 2 Samuel 24:1-3 with 1 Chronicles 21:1-3, it is evident that a spirit of pride, and perhaps of foreign military conquest, actuated David in taking a census of the people, and hence it was done through his generals with a detachment of soldiers, and not, as on other occasions, through the priests; certain it is, that it was highly displeasing to God, and even to Joab and the people, and punishable as being a revolt from the true spirit of the theocracy. David himself afterwards acknowledged he had “sinned greatly,” and “done very foolishly.”