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Araunah (also known as Ornan) was the Jebusite who owned the treshing floor on Mount Moriah, which King David later purchased. When David made the mistake of taking a census of Israel, he was given by the Lord a choice of one of three punishments. David chose the pestilence upon Israel, in which 70,000 men died.
When David prayed to the Lord to strike him, instead of the people, an angel of the Lord told the prophet Gad, to tell David to build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. When approached by David to buy the threshing floor, Araunah offered to give David the floor, the oxen, the threshing sledges and the wheat for free.
But David refused the offer and bought the property at full price, saying "No, I insist on paying the full price. I will not take for the LORD what is yours, or sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing" (1 Chronicles 21:24b, NIV). So David paid 600 shekels of gold for the site. David then built an altar there to the Lord, and offered up burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. The Lord then stopped the pestilence. (See 1 Chronicles 21:9-27).
Next person in the Bible: Artaxerxes
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