Skip to content
mannafest.faith
Read
1 Chronicles

1 Chronicleschapter 21

30 verses · BSB1 Chronicles book hub →

Speaks with:2 Samuel 24×91 Chronicles 27×32 Samuel 12×21 Samuel 6×2Numbers 16×21 Kings 21×2

Summary

Chapter summary

'And Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel': one of Scripture's clearest glimpses of the adversary at work behind a king's pride. Joab protests and leaves Levi and Benjamin uncounted; God is displeased and offers three judgments; David chooses to fall into the hand of Jehovah, 'for very great are his mercies.' Seventy thousand die, and David sees the angel standing between earth and heaven with a drawn sword over Jerusalem. He buys the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite at the full price ('I will not take that which is thine for Jehovah, nor offer a burnt-offering without cost') and fire falls from heaven on the altar. That floor becomes the temple mount.

Context

History · Ezra — 1 Chronicles overview

  • A. 1–6 Satan moves David to number Israel
  • B. 7–15 Three punishments offered, and an angel over Jerusalem
  • C. 16–30 Ornan's threshing floor bought at the full price

The outline

  1. A.Satan moves David to number Israelvv. 1 to 6

    Read vv. 1 to 6 →

  2. B.Three punishments offered, and an angel over Jerusalemvv. 7 to 15

    Read vv. 7 to 15 →

  3. C.Ornan's threshing floor bought at the full pricevv. 16 to 30

    Read vv. 16 to 30 →

The world behind this chapter

1 Chronicles 21
When
The census, the plague, and the buying of the temple hill · Late in David's reign, c. 975 BC
Where
The whole land, then a threshing floor on the rock north of the city of David
Who first heard it
People standing on the exact ground this chapter buys

The history

A census in that world had two purposes: taxation and conscription. Counting the men who drew a sword was how a king measured what he could spend and how many he could call up. That is why Joab resists — he can see the policy behind the arithmetic — and why he refuses to include Levi and Benjamin in the count at all.

The Law also attached a condition to any numbering of Israel: each man counted paid a ransom for his life, so that no plague would break out among them. The census here is taken with no such payment and no such fear.

Two honest difficulties belong to this chapter. The totals differ from those in Samuel — over a million here against eight hundred thousand there, and a lower Judah figure — which is most simply explained by different categories being included, such as the standing troops of chapter 27 counted in one list and not the other. And where Samuel says the LORD's anger moved David, Chronicles says an adversary stood up against Israel and provoked him. The two are not rivals: Scripture regularly shows God permitting an adversary to act, with the responsibility for the sin resting on the one who commits it.

The threshing floor of Ornan is the hinge. Threshing floors were flat outcrops of bedrock on high, windy ground, and this one sat on the hill north of the old city. Ornan was up there working, saw the angel, and hid. He offers the floor, the oxen for the offering, the threshing sledges for firewood, and the wheat — free. David refuses: 'I will not take what is yours for the LORD, nor offer burnt offerings without cost.' The price named here, six hundred shekels of gold, is for the whole site; the fifty shekels of silver in Samuel is for the floor and the oxen.

What it meant to them

This is the title deed to the temple mount. Every reader knew the altar stood on that rock, and this chapter told them how it got there — not by royal seizure but by full payment, and not by planning but by mercy after judgment.

It also answered a practical question. The tabernacle and the bronze altar were still at Gibeon, but David could not go there, and the fire that fell here settled the matter. The place of sacrifice moved because God answered by fire on this rock.

Sources cited

  • Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
  • Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Chronicles

Every work MannaFest builds on →

The text of this chapter

This page carries no textual note on 1 Chronicles 21. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →

This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.

← Back: 1 Chronicles 20Continue: 1 Chronicles 22 →