Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Chronicles 20-23.

Today’s passage discusses the plague which descended upon Israel following David’s census.  I struggle with how to express my thoughts about the ending of the plague because the wording the writer uses to describe what happened is less than completely clear.  There was some kind of event which happened at the threshing floor of Araunah.  This event led David and his advisors to build an altar there and begin offering sacrifices.  What is not clear to me is whether we are to understand that the plague stopped there before or after David made an offering there.  One way of reading this passage is that David bought the threshing floor, built an altar upon it, and began making offerings there because the plague stopped there.  Another way of reading this is that God directed David to buy the threshing floor, build an altar upon it, and began making sacrifices there and that the plague stopped when David followed those instructions.  Whichever way we are supposed to understand these events, something clearly happened at the threshing floor because the passage tells us that David was unwilling to go past it to go to Gibeon, where the tabernacle and the altar which travelled through the wilderness with it were set up.  The passage says that David and his advisors saw an angel with a drawn sword extended over Jerusalem.  The passage also tells us that Araunah and his four sons saw the angel as well.  Perhaps the reason the passage seems to indicate both that the plague stopped before David offered sacrifices at the threshing floor and that the plague stopped because David sacrificed at the threshing floor is because the writer realized in hindsight that the plague had stopped before the sacrifices were made but that David and those around him did not know that when they made those sacrifices.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.