Scripture Daily

Context No. 1745 of 4322 · 1 Chronicles

Context · Reflection

1 Chronicles 21:18-22: in context

18Then the LORD’s angel commanded Gad to tell David that David should go up and raise an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. 19David went up at the saying of Gad, which he spoke in the LORD’s name. 20Ornan turned back and saw the angel; and his four sons who were with him hid themselves. Now Ornan was threshing wheat. 21As 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. 22Then David said to Ornan, “Sell me the place of this threshing floor, that I may build an altar to the LORD on it. You shall sell it to me for the full price, that the plague may be stopped from afflicting the people.”

After David's sin in numbering the people, a plague falls on Israel, and the angel of the LORD directs, through the prophet Gad, that David build an altar on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. David goes up at once, as Gad has spoken in the LORD's name. Ornan, threshing his wheat, sees the king coming and bows to the ground. And David asks to buy the threshing floor at full price, that he may build an altar there to the LORD, so that the plague may be stopped from afflicting the people.

The purpose of the altar is stated plainly: that the plague may be stopped. Judgment had fallen on the people, and God's remedy was an altar, a place of sacrifice, where the judgment would be halted. David does not stop the plague by his own effort or plea alone; God appoints a place of atonement, an altar and a sacrifice, and it is there that the wrath is turned away. This is a pattern that runs through Scripture and finds its fulfillment beyond this threshing floor. The judgment our sin deserves is not waved away as though it did not matter; it is halted at an altar, turned aside by a sacrifice, met at the appointed place of atonement. And there is something remarkable about the place. This threshing floor of Ornan, where the plague was stopped and the altar built, is the very site where Solomon would later build the temple, the place of Israel's sacrifices for centuries, the mountain of the Lord. Where judgment was halted by sacrifice, God established the enduring place of atonement. And all of it points forward to the true altar and the true sacrifice, to Christ, at whose cross the judgment we deserved was finally and fully halted, the wrath turned away once for all. David's altar stopped a plague; the cross it foreshadowed stops the judgment of sin itself. The God who provided a place of atonement to halt the plague has provided, in Christ, the atonement that turns away wrath forever. Our part is to come to that altar, to the sacrifice God himself has appointed, where alone the judgment is stopped.

When I feel the weight of judgment my sin deserves, do I try to wave it away or bear it alone, or do I come to the atonement God has appointed, the altar David's foreshadowed, the cross of Christ, where alone the judgment is halted and the wrath turned away?

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