2 Samuel 24:16

The angel. In the next verse we are told that David saw the angel, and more fully in 1 Chronicles 21:16 that he beheld him "standing between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand." The pestilence plainly was not a natural visitation; though possibly the means used was a simoom, or poisonous wind, advancing with terrible rapidity throughout Israel. The Lord repented. In all the dealings of God's providence, his actions are made to depend upon human conduct. Looked at from above, from God's side, all things are foreknown and immutably fixed; looked at from man's side, all is perpetually changing as man changes. The rescue of Jerusalem as the result of David's penitence and prayers, is thus to human view a change in the counsels and even in the feelings of him who changeth not. The threshing place. "The threshing floor," as rightly translated in 1 Chronicles 21:18 , 1 Chronicles 21:21 , 1 Chronicles 21:24 . Threshing floors were constructed, whenever possible, on eminences, that the wind might drive the chaff and dust away. Araunah's was on the east of Jerusalem, outside the walls, upon Mount Moriah, and was the site on which the temple was built (see 2 Chronicles 3:1 ). Araunah . The name is so spelt seven times in 1 Chronicles 21:20-24 , for which reason the Massorites have substituted it for Avarnah, found in this verse in the Hebrew text, and for Aranyah in 1 Chronicles 21:18 . In 1 Chronicles 21:1-30 the name is spelt Ornan ; in the Septuagint in all places, ὀρνά , Orna , and in the Syriac, Oron. The name is, of course, a Jebusite word, and the variation arises from the narrators having written down the sound as it caught their ears. In this, as in many other particulars, it is clear that the chronicler derived his account from independent Sources.