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132 themselves. Now Ornan was threshing wheat. And as David came to Ornan, Ornan looked and saw David, and went out of the threshing-floor, and bowed himself to David with his face to the ground. Then David said to Ornan, Give me the place of this threshing-floor, that I may build thereon an altar unto the : for the full price shalt thou give it me: that the plague may be stayed from the people. And Ornan said unto David, Take it to thee, and let my lord the king do that which is good in his eyes: lo, I give thee the oxen for burnt offerings, and the threshing instruments for wood, and the wheat for the meal offering; I give it all. And king David said to Ornan, Nay; but I will verily buy it for the full price: for I will not take that which is thine for the, nor offer a burnt offering without cost. So David gave to Ornan for the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight. And David built there an altar unto the, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and called upon the ; and he answered him from heaven by fire upon the altar of burnt offering. And the commanded the angel; and he put up his sword again into the sheath thereof.

21. was threshing wheat] By driving oxen over it; cp. ver. 23.

22. the place of this threshing-floor] The expression implies perhaps that David bought more than the mere area of the threshing-floor.

for the full price] Gen. xxiii. 9 (R.V.).

23. the meal offering] Cp. Lev. ii. 1—16.

25. gave for the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight] In 2 Sam. xxiv. 24, bought the threshing-floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. The huge discrepancy here between Chron. and Sam. is noteworthy. If the price in Sam., 50 shekels of silver for threshing-floor and oxen, seems somewhat small (compared with the 400 shekels paid by Abraham for the cave of Machpelah, Gen. xxiii. 15—17), the 600 shekels of gold in Chron. is extravagantly large. It is accounted for by the fact that the Chronicler regarded the transaction, not as the acquisition merely of the site for the altar but of the area on which the Temple was afterwards built (see ver. 22). No sum could well seem too large for the purchase of ground destined to be so holy. The figure 600 may have been chosen on the ground that it was equal to a payment of 50 shekels for each tribe.

26. peace offerings] See xvi. 1, note. At the end of the verse LXX. (cp. Pesh.) adds, and consumed the burnt offering. Cp. Lev. ix. 24; 1 Kin. xviii. 38. The fire is not mentioned in 2 Sam.