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

Usually when I look at this passage I look at David’s census and the plague which followed it.  However, it struck me today that this writer includes the census and the plague as setup to explain why the spot to build the Temple was chosen.  David chose the location of Araunah’s threshing floor as the place to build an altar to God.  Later, Solomon built the Temple there.  I find the description of how David chose that spot somewhat confusing (I am not sure that confusing is the correct word).  First the passage tells us that God told the angel to stop spreading the plague when it was at Araunah’s threshing floor.  Then the passage tells us that David saw the angel at Araunah’s threshing floor and begged God to stop sending a plague upon the people of Israel, who were innocent of this wrongdoing.  Then David went to Araunah’s threshing floor to build an altar in order to make an offering to the Lord (or, maybe, David went there as part of pleading with the Lord).  Finally, the passage tells us that Araunah was threshing, saw the angel, and then saw David approaching.  This reads to me as if the writer of this passage had several different accounts which contained slightly different details and were not told in a way which allowed him to determine exactly how they fit together.  It reads to me as if David began praying for God to stop the plague as soon as he became aware of it.  As the plague came to Jerusalem, Gad instructed David to have an altar built to make an offering to God.  As David headed for Mount Moriah, which was the obvious place in Jerusalem for an altar, he saw the angel of the Lord at Araunah’s threshing floor.  At the same time, Araunah saw the angel as well.  At that moment God instructed the angel to stop, or perhaps God instructed the angel to stop just before David or Araunah saw it.

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