Ornan’s Threshing Floor

Synopsis     1 Chron 21:18-28     1/21/2020 

Ornan the Jebusite owned the threshing floor where God’s angel loitered. So, King David went out to the threshing floor. While there, the prophet Gad commanded David, in the name of the Lord, to build an altar.  

Accordingly, David purchased the threshing floor, the oxen, and the grain from Ornan. And there he built an altar. Next, he prepared the sacrifice. And afterward, fire descended from heaven and consumed the sacrifice that David had offered.  

After the sacrifice, David observed that God’s angel returned his sword to its sheath. And so, he perceived God’s blessing with that place. As a result, he continued to offer sacrifices at the threshing floor for the rest of his life. 

Ornan’s Threshing Floor 

The threshing floor where David offered sacrificed was located on Mount Moriah. So, the whole strange episode of David’s illicit census and the resulting plague had the net effect of bringing the tabernacle sacrifice to Mount Moriah.  

God Works in Strange Ways 

The expression roles off my tongue. But the reality of God’s strangeness isn’t something that I ever anticipate. No matter how much experience I may have, I continue to think that God ought to behave in a way that seems reasonable and rational to me.  

So, perhaps that greatest dimension of God’s strangeness is that I keep thinking that He thinks as I do.  I have to learn to be OK with His greatness.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways—oracle of the LORD.” Isaiah 55:8