Araunah

A Jebusite from whom David bought a threshing-floor on which to rear an altar to Yahweh after the plague that fell on Israel for David's census. The same man is called Araunah in the Samuel narrative and Ornan in the Chronicles parallel.

The Threshing-Floor and the Stayed Plague

The angel of Yahweh, sent to destroy Jerusalem, halts at Araunah's threshing-floor: "And when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, Yahweh repented of the evil, and said to the angel who destroyed the people, It is enough; now let down your hand. And the angel of Yahweh was by the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite" (2 Sa 24:16). David, seeing the stroke, takes it on himself: "Look, I have sinned, and I, the shepherd, have done perversely; but these sheep, what have they done?" (2 Sa 24:17).

The Chronicles parallel adds the visible figure of the angel: "David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of Yahweh standing between earth and heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem" (1 Ch 21:16). David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fall on their faces. Ornan and his four sons see the same angel; the sons hide themselves while Ornan goes on threshing wheat (1 Ch 21:20).

David's Purchase

The prophet Gad relays the divine command: "Go up, rear an altar to Yahweh in the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite" (2 Sa 24:18). In Chronicles the order comes through the angel itself: "Then the angel of Yahweh commanded Gad to say to David, that David should go up, and rear an altar to Yahweh in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite" (1 Ch 21:18).

The Jebusite owner, recognizing the king, bows with his face to the ground and offers everything outright — the floor, the oxen for the burnt-offering, the threshing-instruments and yokes for wood (2 Sa 24:20-23). In Chronicles he adds the wheat for the meal-offering and says simply, "I give it all" (1 Ch 21:23). His parting word is a blessing on the king: "Yahweh your God accept you" (2 Sa 24:23).

David refuses the gift. The principle he gives is that an offering must cost the offerer something: "No; but I will truly buy it of you at a price. Neither will I offer burnt-offerings to Yahweh my God which cost me nothing" (2 Sa 24:24). The two accounts record different sums — fifty shekels of silver for the threshing-floor and the oxen in 2 Sa 24:24, six hundred shekels of gold by weight for the place itself in 1 Ch 21:25.

Two Names, One Site

The narrative is the same — the angel halted at the threshing-floor, the prophet's command, the bow to the ground, the offered gift, the insisted-on purchase — and the man is the same. The variation is only in the name the text gives him: Araunah throughout 2 Samuel 24, Ornan throughout 1 Chronicles 21. UPDV preserves both forms exactly as each book has them.