The Threshing Floor of Araunah

The event in which Araunah's threshing-floor figures is narrated in II Samuel xxiv, and again in I Chronicles xxi. We are there told that, because David had numbered his subjects, 'the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel and there died of the people from Dan even unto Beersheba seventy thousand men.' But when the destroying angel had begun to strike Jerusalem, David saw him, and he humbled himself and confessed his sin. And 'the Lord repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed the people: It is enough; stay now thine hand. And the angel of the Lord was standing by the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebu-site .... And Gad came that day to David, and said unto him : Go up, rear an altar unto the Lord in the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite.' So David went up and asked Araunah, who happened to be there threshing, to sell him the threshing-floor so that he might build there an altar to the Lord. Like a true Oriental Araunah begs David to take not only the floor, but also the oxen he was threshing with for the burnt sacrifice and his threshing-drag for wood; he makes him a present,of them all. But David knew what he was meant to understand, and paid Araunah the full value. 'So David bought the threshing-floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. And David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.' (I Samuel xxiv, 15-25

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