A threshing floor was the flat ground where wheat was threshed, separating the grain from the chaff. The threshing floor of Araunah stood atop a hill in Jerusalem, belonging to a Jebusite named Araunah.
David sinned by ordering a census of the people, and a plague struck Israel as judgment. When the angel of the Lord drew near Jerusalem to destroy it, God commanded him to stop right there, beside the threshing floor of Araunah.
The prophet Gad instructed David to build an altar on that spot. Araunah offered to give the land and the animals for free, but David insisted on paying the full price, for he did not want to offer the Lord something that cost him nothing.
David built the altar, offered sacrifices, and the Lord answered with fire from heaven. The plague stopped. A few years later, Solomon chose the very same ground, Mount Moriah, to build the temple of the Lord.
The episode shows how God turns a place of judgment into a place of worship, and how an act of obedience by David prepared the ground for the center of Israel’s faith.
