Ornan

AI summary: Ornan matters because the cross references place him at the moment where judgment gives way to mercy and sacrifice. David meets him while the destroying angel is halted, insists on paying full cost for the site, and offers there the sacrifices that mark the end of the plague. Chronicles then ties that location to the future temple mount. Taken together, the material presents Ornan as a seemingly minor figure whose threshing floor becomes the sacred ground where repentance, atonement, and the future of temple worship converge.¹

Agile; also called Ornan 1 Chr. 21:15, a Jebusite who dwelt in Jerusalem before it was taken by the Israelites. The destroying angel, sent to punish David for his vanity in taking a census of the people, was stayed in his work of destruction near a threshing-floor belonging to Araunah which was situated on Mount Moriah. Araunah offered it to David as a free gift, together with the oxen and the threshing instruments; but the king insisted on purchasing it at its full price (2 Sam. 24:24; 1 Chr. 21:24, 25), for, according to the law of sacrifices, he could not offer to God what cost him nothing. On the same place Solomon afterwards erected the temple (2 Sam. 24:16; 2 Chr. 3:1). (See ALTAR.) ³