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Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary

IntroIndex©

ARAUNAH

Jebusite whose threshing floor was the scene of some significant events in biblical history. (Jebus was the ancient Canaanite city that later became Jerusalem.) Araunah’s threshing floor marked the place where the Lord stopped an angel from further inflicting Israel with a pestilence after the death of 70,000 Israelites (2 Sm 24:15-16). The plague from the Lord had come upon Israel as a result of King David’s prideful census. At the instruction of the prophet Gad, the repentant David purchased the floor and built an altar to the Lord (2 Sm 24:17-25). Araunah offered oxen and everything needed for the altar as a gift, but David insisted on paying him, saying, “I cannot present burnt offerings to the Lord my God that have cost me nothing” (2 Sm 24:24, NLT). A parallel account (1 Chr 21:15-16) uses the Hebrew form Ornan for the Jebusite’s foreign name. David was in too much of a hurry to go to the tabernacle to make his sacrifice, the tabernacle and altar being farther away on the hill of Gibeon (1 Chr 21:27-30). David chose the threshing floor as the site for the temple (1 Chr 22:1), and Solomon built it there on Mt Moriah (2 Chr 3:1). It was the same area to which God commanded Abraham to go for the sacrifice of Isaac (Gn 22:2). Tradition locates the present-day Muslim mosque, the Dome of the Rock, on the site of Araunah’s threshing floor.