2 Samuel 24:20

24:18-25 God's encouraging us to offer to him spiritual sacrifices, is an evidence of his reconciling us to himself. David purchased the ground to build the altar. God hates robbery for burnt-offering. Those know not what religion is, who chiefly care to make it cheap and easy to themselves, and who are best pleased with that which costs them least pains or money. For what have we our substance, but to honour God with it; and how can it be better bestowed? See the building of the altar, and the offering proper sacrifices upon it. Burnt-offerings to the glory of God's justice; peace-offerings to the glory of his mercy. Christ is our Altar, our Sacrifice; in him alone we may expect to escape his wrath, and to find favour with God. Death is destroying all around, in so many forms, and so suddenly, that it is madness not to expect and prepare for the close of life.

And Araunah looked,.... Peeped up out of the place in which he had hid himself with his four sons, for fear of the angel, and which they saw, 1 Chronicles 21:20 , and saw the king and his servants coming towards him; he perceived, by the course they steered, that they were coming to him: and Araunah went out; of the threshingfloor, out of the place where he had hid himself, for he had been threshing wheat, 1 Chronicles 21:20; nor was it thought below great personages in those times to be employed in such work; so Gideon was threshing, when the angel of the Lord appeared to him, Judges 6:11; Boaz winnowed barley in his threshingfloor, Ruth 3:2, and bowed himself before the king with his face to the ground; in reverence of the king.

Verse 20. - Araunah... saw the king. In 1 Chronicles 21:20 , "saw the angel;" but the text there is apparently corrupt, the difference, moreover, in Hebrew between "king" and "angel" being very slight. The addition there of the story of Araunah's four sons hiding themselves is very lifelike and natural. For these remnants of the aborigines, though tolerated, yet held a very insecure position, as we have seen in the dealings of Saul with the Gibeonites; and the coming of the king with his retinue to the out of the way spot where Araunah was at work, no doubt filled them all with terror. 2 Samuel 24:20

And his servants - In Chronicles "his four sons," namely, David's. It is very possible that David may have taken his sons with him, as well as his elders, and Gad's original narrative may have mentioned the circumstance, which the compiler of this chapter did not care to specify, and so used the general term "his servants."

18. Araunah—or Ornan (1Ch 21:18), the Jebusite, one of the ancient inhabitants, who, having become a convert to the true religion, retained his house and possessions. He resided on Mount Moriah, the spot on which the temple was afterwards built (2Ch 3:1); but that mount was not then enclosed in the town.

When Aravnah saw the king coming up to him with his servants (ויּשׁקף, "he looked out," viz., from the enclosure of the threshing-floor), he came out, bowed low even to the earth, and asked the king what was the occasion of his coming; whereupon David replied, "To buy the floor from thee, to build an altar to the Lord, that the plague may be turned away from the people."

The threshing-floor of Aravnah was situated, like all other threshing-floors, outside the city, and upon an eminence, or, according to the more precise statement which follows, to the north-east of Zion, upon Mount Moriah (see at 2 Samuel 24:25 ). According to the Chethib of 2 Samuel 24:16 , the name of the owner of the floor was האורנה, of 2 Samuel 24:18 ארניה, and of 2 Samuel 24:20 (twice) ארונה. This last form also occurs in 2 Samuel 24:22 , 2 Samuel 24:23 , and 2 Samuel 24:24 , and has been substituted by the Masoretes as the Keri in 2 Samuel 24:16 and 2 Samuel 24:18 . In the Chronicles, on the other hand, the name is always written ארנן (Ornan), and hence in the Septuagint we find Ὄρνα in both texts. "The form ארונה (Aravnah) has not a Hebrew stamp, whereas Orna and Ornan are true Hebrew formations. But for this very reason Aravnah appears to be derived from an ancient tradition" (Bertheau).