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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
To the time appointed; either,
1. From morning to evening, which is here called the time appointed; or, the time of the convention, or, public meeting, as this Hebrew word oft signifies, i. e. till the time of the evening prayer and sacrifice, when the people used more solemnly to meet together. See Psa_141:2 Act_3:1. Thus God mitigated his sentence, and turned three days into one; it being a thing not unusual with God to qualify his threatenings, and to take off the evil threatened sometimes wholly, as in Nineveh’s case, and sometimes in part. And this God might do here upon the speedy and serious repentance of David, and of his people. Or rather,
2. From the morning (or rather, from that morning; for the article seems to be emphatical, and to denote that very morning in which Gad came to David, 2Sa_24:11, and that the plague did immediately ensue after Gad’s offer, and David’s choice,)
even to the time appointed, to wit, by God, i.e. for three days, as God had set the time, 2Sa_24:13.
Object. If it continued three days, how is it said that God repented him of the evil, and stopped the angel in his course? 2Sa_24:16.
Answ. This he did in the beginning of the third day, whereas otherwise it should have gone on to the end of the day. Or it may signify no more but this, At the end of the third day God gave over smiting; for then is God said (after the manner of men) to repent, when he ceaseth to proceed as before he had done. Seventy thousand men; so the number of his people, which was the matter of his pride and glorying, was diminished.