The Census, the Plague and the Threshing Floor

"And again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah." Joab objects. After nine months and twenty days: Israel 800,000 swordsmen, Judah 500,000. "And David's heart smote him… I have sinned greatly in that I have done."

Gad the seer: "Shall seven years of famine come unto thee… or wilt thou flee three months before thine enemies… or that there be three days' pestilence?" "Let us fall now into the hand of the LORD; for his mercies are great: and let me not fall into the hand of man." Seventy thousand die from Dan to Beersheba. When the angel stretches out his hand over Jerusalem, "the LORD repented him of the evil, and said… It is enough: stay now thine hand." The angel is by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.

"Lo, I have sinned… but these sheep, what have they done? let thine hand, I pray thee, be against me." Gad tells David to build an altar on Araunah's threshing floor. Araunah offers it free. "Nay; but I will surely buy it of thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the LORD my God of that which doth cost me nothing. So David bought the threshingfloor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver." He builds the altar; "the plague was stayed from Israel."

Who incited David?

These are differences between two biblical histories, not between manuscripts of one book. Chronicles, written centuries later, may attribute the incitement to Satan to avoid making God the direct cause of sin. Harmonizations (God permitted Satan; 50 shekels for the floor, 600 for the whole site) are offered by some readers; others see the Chronicler's reinterpretation. The site shows both, not merged. See the passage pages.

Seven or three years?

The Hebrew of 2 Samuel 24:13 has seven years of famine; the library's Greek has three, like 1 Chronicles 21:12; the Vulgate has seven. Three fits the pattern of "three months… three days."

Why was the census wrong?

The text does not say. Proposals: trust in military strength rather than God; failure to collect the ransom of Exodus 30:12 ("that there be no plague among them"); royal overreach toward taxation and conscription. It remains debated.

From threshing floor to temple

2 Chronicles 3:1 says Solomon built the temple "in mount Moriah… in the place that David had prepared in the threshingfloor of Ornan." That identification is the Chronicler's; no excavation has located the floor or the altar, and the Temple Mount cannot be excavated.