not seem to be arranged sequentially, mixing as it does episodes from the Philistine wars with David’s ‘last words’. The narrative offers no real indications as to when the famine, census or David’s ‘rest’ from warfare occurred. Instead of sequential narrative, the contents of 2 Samuel 21–24 are arranged in a chiastic pattern in which the thematically similar stories of the famine (21:1–14) and census (24:1–25) form a matched pair, separated by the exploits and lists of David’s soldiers (21:15–22;