2 Samuel 24:15,16; 1 Chronicles 21:16-30; Chronicles 22:1
So the LORD sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning even to the time appointed: and there died of the people from Dan even to Beersheba seventy thousand men. And when the angel stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it, 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 by the threshingplace of Araunah the Jebusite.
And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the LORD stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders of Israel, who were clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces. And David said unto God, Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered? even I it is that have sinned and done evil indeed; but as for these sheep, what have they done? let thine hand, I pray thee, O LORD my God, be on me, and on my father’s house; but not on thy people, that they should be plagued. Then the angel of the LORD commanded Gad to say to David, that David should go up, and set up an altar unto the LORD in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite. And David went up at the saying of Gad, which he spake in the name of the LORD.
And Ornan turned back, and saw the angel; and his four sons with him hid themselves.
Now Ornan was threshing wheat. And as David came to Ornan, Ornan looked and saw David, and went out of the threshingfloor, and bowed himself to David with his face to the ground. Then David said to Ornan, Grant me the place of this threshingfloor, that I may build an altar therein unto the LORD: thou shalt grant it me for the full price: that the plague may be stayed from the people. And Ornan said unto David, Take it to thee, and let my lord the king do that which is good in his eyes: lo, I give thee the oxen also for burnt offerings, and the threshing instruments for wood, and the wheat for the meat offering; I give it all.
And king David said to Ornan, Nay; but I will verily buy it for the full price: for I will not take that which is thine for the LORD, nor offer burnt offerings without cost. So David gave to Ornan for the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight. And David built there an altar unto the LORD, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and called upon the LORD; and he answered him from heaven by fire upon the altar of burnt offering. And the LORD commanded the angel; and he put up his sword again into the sheath thereof.
At that time when David saw that the LORD had answered him in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite, then he sacrificed there. For the tabernacle of the LORD, which Moses made in the wilderness, and the altar of the burnt offering, were at that season in the high place at Gibeon. But David could not go before it to inquire of God: for he was afraid because of the sword of the angel of the LORD.
Then David said, This is the house of the LORD God, and this is the altar of the burnt offering for Israel.
THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): The men of Israel and Judah were punished, not so much because David numbered the people, as because they had offended the Lord and called down by their vices this punishment upon them. Nor can we, upon a review of what is past, want proofs of their criminality. Can we conceive anything more shameful and sinful, than the rebellions which we have read of in the preceding chapters? Rebellions against a good and pious king, established over them by the immediate choice of God Himself.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): David hears of 70,000 of his subjects who in a few hours were struck dead by the pestilence. He was proud of the multitude of his people, but divine Justice took a course to make them fewer. Justly is that taken from us, weakened, or embittered to us, which we are proud of. David must have the people numbered: “Bring me the number of them,” says he, “that I may know it,” 1 Chronicles 21:2. But now God numbers them after another manner; He “numbers them to the sword,” Isaiah 65:12. And David had another number of them brought, more to his confusion than was to his satisfaction—namely, the number of the slain.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): God punished one sin by another: the sin of David works for the chastisement of a sinful people.
THOMAS COKE: “Let thine hand—be against me, and on my father’s house,” is a noble instance of David’s generous concern for the welfare of his people. The language is tender and pathetic; it is the real language and spirit of a genuine true shepherd of the people, devoting himself and family as a sacrifice to God for the preservation of his subjects.
THE EDITOR: “On my father’s house,” David said. Placing an inordinate natural family affection above his duty to God and the people of Israel, had always been the insidious heart idol that generated David’s sins of ommission. But in that phrase, David’s idol was finally and completely destroyed; see Psalm 45:10,11, and Isaiah 55:3—“Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.” Immediately, in answer to David’s intercessory plea for Israel, the Angel of the Lord commanded Gad to instruct David to build an altar, showing that David’s sure mercies are received only through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice, Acts 13:32-39.
ROBERT HAWKER (1753-1827): Consider how particularly the prophet Gad commanded David to rear an altar in this spot. This memorable transaction was on the very spot where in ages before the LORD showed mercy to Abraham, even on mount Moriah, Genesis 22:2. Hence Abraham is commanded to sacrifice, his son; and the pestilence to Israel lays the foundation for the introduction of this sacrifice again, in the same spot, on mount Moriah.
JOHN LIGHTFOOT (1602-1675): In the very place where Abraham, by a countermand from heaven, was stayed from slaying his son, this angel, by a like countermand, was stayed from destroying Jerusalem.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): And where, but a short time after, the temple itself was built; that temple in which all the sacrifices were offered, and in the services of which the death of Christ was so abundantly prefigured. “Solomon began to build the house of the LORD at Jerusalem in mount Moriah, where the LORD appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had prepared in the threshingfloor,” 2 Chronicles 3:1.
C. H. SPURGEON: There was the place for the temple, where the angel sheathed his sword. Christ Jesus, in His great atonement, is the corner-stone of the temple where divine justice sheathes its sword. There let the house of God be built. Every true Church of God is founded on the glorious doctrine of the atoning sacrifice. It was a threshingfloor, too; and God has built His Church on a threshingfloor. Depend upon it, the flail will always be going in every true Church, to fetch out the wheat from the chaff. We must have tribulation if we are in the Church of God.
THE EDITOR: David purchased that threshingfloor for its full price, six hundred shekels of gold; and fifty shekels of silver to buy the oxen to sacrifice, 2 Samuel 24:24; just as Jesus Himself paid the full price for our debt of sin—but “ye were not redeemed by corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with precious blood of Christ,” 1 Peter 1:18,19.
ROBERT HAWKER: Surely so grand an object as the redemption of our sinful nature by the sacrifice of Jesus, was deservedly shadowed forth. And, no doubt, to make way for that important and most interesting of all doctrines, redemption by Jesus. The burnt-offerings and peace-offerings offered up on the memorable spot, where afterwards the Lord Jesus Christ offered His soul an offering for sin, most plainly shows how the Holy Ghost had an eye to this, and accepted the sinner in the complete salvation of the Saviour.
MATTHEW HENRY: It is for the sake of the great sacrifice that our forfeited lives are preserved from the destroying angel…It seems the owner was a Jebusite, Araunah by name, proselyted to the Jewish religion, though by birth a Gentile, and therefore allowed, not only to dwell among the Israelites, but to have a possession of his own in a city, Leviticus 25:29,30.
ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): Araunah is written in 2 Samuel 24, but in every place in 1 Chronicles 21, his name is written as Ornan. It is likely he had both names.
THE EDITOR: Potts’ Bible Proper Names has both Araunah and Ornan as meaning “pine” trees, or an “ash of God.” But Jackson’s Dictionary of Scripture Proper Names, has Araunah as “make ye to shine,” or the “joyful shouting of Jah;” and Ornan as “light was perpetuated,” or “their fir tree.” Summarizing those meanings, we have a tree, light, and joy—Do not all those meanings connect to Christ’s substitutional atonement, as portrayed by David in this context? “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed,” 1 Peter 2:24; and its efficacy on earth—“If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin,” 1 John 1:7—and even to its joyful effect in heaven, as Jesus said, “Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth,” Luke 15:10.
ROBERT HAWKER: When I consider that Christ Himself is the altar, the sacrifice, and the sacrificer, for us; and that God our Father, for His sake, and for His sake alone, is entreated for the land, and the plague and everlasting destruction for sin is now stayed from Israel, I rejoice to behold Jesus and find my heart going forth in songs of holy joy, that the same is He of whom Moses, and the prophets, and patriarchs, did write, Jesus of Nazareth—“Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved,” Acts 4:12.