Araunah

Araunah (Hebrew: אֲרַוְנָה‎ ’Ǎrawnāh) was a Jebusite who was mentioned in the Second Book of Samuel who owned the threshing floor on the summit of Mount Moriah that David purchased and used as the site for assembling an altar to God. The First Book of Chronicles, a later text, renders his name as Ornan (Hebrew: אָרְנָן‎ ’Ārənān).

The narrative concerning Araunah appears at both 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21. The Samuel version is the final member of a group of narratives, which together constitute the "appendix" (2 Samuel 21-24) of the Books of Samuel, and which do not fit into the chronological ordering of the rest of Samuel. In the Samuel narrative, God was angry at Israel again then incites David to punish the Israelites by imposing a census upon them, an order which Joab reluctantly carries out. (In the version of the narrative presented by the Book of Chronicles, it is Satan, not God, who incites David to make the census). Yahweh regarded David's action as a sin, and so punished him, sending Gad the prophet to offer David a choice between three punishments:

David indicated that, rather than choose one of the 3 options, he would rather fall into the hands of the Lord's mercy and discretion. So an angel was sent to spread the plague through the land. However, when the angel reached Jerusalem, God ordered the angel to stop; at this point the angel was at Araunah's threshing floor, which David noticed. Gad instructed David to build an altar at Araunah's threshing floor, so David purchased the location from Araunah, even though Araunah offered it to him freely. According to the Books of Samuel, David paid 50 silver shekels for the location; Chronicles states that David paid 600 gold shekels.

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