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1 Chronicles 21: What the Passage Says

107 claims across 30 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What 1 Chronicles 21 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Satan moves David to count Israel's fighting men, and Joab carries out the order under protest, leaving out Levi and Benjamin. God is displeased and offers David three punishments through the seer Gad; David chooses to fall into the LORD's hand, and a plague kills seventy thousand men. When the destroying angel halts at the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, David buys the site at full price, builds an altar there, and the LORD answers with fire and stops the plague. The chapter closes by explaining that the tabernacle and its altar were then at Gibeon, and why David did not go there.

Claim by Claim

  1. 21:1
    • An adversary rose up against Israel.
    • It is unclear whether the adversary is named Satan or is simply an unnamed adversary.
    • The adversary incited David to number Israel.
  2. 21:2
    • David spoke to Joab and to the leaders of the people.
    • David told them to go and count Israel from Beersheba to Dan.
    • David told them to bring the count to him.
    • David said his purpose was to know the number of the people.
  3. 21:3
    • Joab answered David.
    • Joab said may the LORD add to his people a hundred times as many as they are.
    • Joab asked the king whether they are not all servants to his lord.
    • Joab asked why his lord requires this thing.
    • Joab asked why this should become guilt for Israel.
  4. 21:4
    • The king's word prevailed over Joab.
    • Joab went out.
    • Joab traveled throughout all Israel.
    • Joab came to Jerusalem.
  5. 21:5
    • Joab gave the number of the mustering of the people to David.
    • All Israel numbered one million one hundred thousand men who drew the sword.
    • Judah numbered four hundred seventy thousand men who drew the sword.
  6. 21:6
    • Joab did not count Levi and Benjamin among them.
    • Joab did not count them because the king's word was abhorrent to him.
  7. 21:7
    • This thing was evil in God's sight.
    • God struck Israel.
  8. 21:8
    • David said to God that he had sinned greatly in doing this thing.
    • David asked God to take away the iniquity of his servant.
    • David said he had acted very foolishly.
  9. 21:9
    • The LORD spoke to Gad.
    • Gad was David's seer.
  10. 21:10
    • The LORD told Gad to go and speak to David.
    • The LORD said he was extending three things over David.
    • The LORD told David to choose one of them.
    • The LORD said he would do that chosen thing to David.
  11. 21:11
    • Gad came to David.
    • Gad told David that this is what the LORD says.
    • Gad told David to accept a choice for himself.
  12. 21:12
    • One option was three years of famine.
    • One option was three months of being swept away before his foes while the sword of his enemies overtakes him.
    • One option was three days of the sword of the LORD and pestilence in the land.
    • During the three-day option the angel of the LORD would be destroying throughout all the territory of Israel.
    • Gad told David to decide what word he should bring back to the one who sent him.
  13. 21:13
    • David said to Gad that he was in great distress.
    • David asked to fall into the hand of the LORD.
    • David said the LORD's mercies are very great.
    • David asked not to fall into the hand of man.
  14. 21:14
    • The LORD sent a pestilence on Israel.
    • Seventy thousand men of Israel fell.
  15. 21:15
    • God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it.
    • As the angel was destroying, the LORD saw.
    • The LORD relented concerning the calamity.
    • The LORD said to the destroying angel that it was enough.
    • The LORD told the angel to stay his hand.
    • The angel of the LORD was standing by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
  16. 21:16
    • David lifted up his eyes.
    • David saw the angel of the LORD standing between the earth and the heaven.
    • The angel had a drawn sword in his hand.
    • The sword was stretched out over Jerusalem.
    • David and the elders were covered in sackcloth.
    • David and the elders fell on their faces.
  17. 21:17
    • David said to God that it was he who gave the order to number the people.
    • David said that he is the one who sinned.
    • David said that he had done great evil.
    • David asked what these sheep had done.
    • David asked the LORD his God to let his hand be on him and on his father's house.
    • David asked that the plague not be on the LORD's people.
  18. 21:18
    • The angel of the LORD spoke to Gad to tell David something.
    • The message was that David should go up and set up an altar to the LORD.
    • The altar was to be on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
  19. 21:19
    • David went up according to the word of Gad.
    • Gad had spoken that word in the name of the LORD.
  20. 21:20
    • Ornan turned around.
    • Ornan saw the angel.
    • Ornan's four sons were with him.
    • Ornan's four sons hid themselves.
    • Ornan was threshing wheat.
  21. 21:21
    • David came to Ornan.
    • Ornan looked and saw David.
    • Ornan went out from the threshing floor.
    • Ornan bowed to David with his face to the ground.
  22. 21:22
    • David said to Ornan to give him the site of the threshing floor.
    • David said he would build an altar to the LORD on it.
    • David told Ornan to give it to him for the full price.
    • David said the purpose was that the plague be stopped from the people.
  23. 21:23
    • Ornan told David to take it for himself.
    • Ornan said his lord the king should do what is good in his eyes.
    • Ornan said he was giving the oxen for burnt offerings.
    • Ornan said he was giving the threshing sledges for wood.
    • Ornan said he was giving the wheat for the grain offering.
    • Ornan said he was giving it all.
  24. 21:24
    • King David said to Ornan no.
    • David said he would surely buy it for the full price.
    • David said he would not take what belongs to Ornan for the LORD.
    • David said he would not offer a burnt offering that cost him nothing.
  25. 21:25
    • David gave Ornan gold shekels for the site.
    • The weight of the gold was six hundred shekels.
  26. 21:26
    • David built an altar to the LORD there.
    • David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.
    • David called upon the LORD.
    • The LORD answered him with fire from heaven on the altar of burnt offering.
  27. 21:27
    • The LORD spoke to the angel.
    • The angel put his sword back into its sheath.
  28. 21:28
    • At that time David saw that the LORD had answered him at the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
    • David sacrificed there.
  29. 21:29
    • The tabernacle of the LORD was at the high place in Gibeon at that time.
    • Moses had made the tabernacle in the wilderness.
    • The altar of burnt offering was at the high place in Gibeon at that time.
  30. 21:30
    • David was not able to go before it to seek God.
    • David was terrified because of the sword of the angel of the LORD.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

21:1
"Satan" here translates a Hebrew word that ordinarily means "adversary" or "accuser", the term is used elsewhere for human opponents and for a prosecuting figure in a heavenly court. A national count of this kind was a muster of men fit for war, the first step toward conscription and taxation; the parallel account in 2 Samuel 24:1 says instead that the LORD's anger moved David to order it.
21:2
"From Beersheba to Dan" was the standard way of saying "the whole country, end to end", Beersheba marked the southern edge of settled Israelite land and Dan the northern. The listing here runs south to north, the reverse of the more usual "from Dan to Beersheba."
21:3
"Trespass" in the King James means guilt or offense, not walking on someone's land. Israelite law attached a condition to counting the people: each man counted had to pay a ransom price (Exodus 30:12), and Joab treats the order as something that will bring guilt on the nation as a whole, not just on the king.
21:4
The King James says the king's word "prevailed." That means David won the argument and got his way.
21:5
"Men able to fight with a sword" is the ancient formula for men of military age, so these are army figures rather than a total population. The parallel account in 2 Samuel 24:9 gives different numbers, 800,000 for Israel and 500,000 for Judah.
21:6
Under the census law in Numbers 1:47–49 the tribe of Levi was exempt from a military count because its men served at the sanctuary. Benjamin was the tribe in whose territory Jerusalem lay. Chronicles does not say why Joab stopped where he did, only that he refused to finish.
21:7
"Smote" is old English for struck, or hit hard.
21:8
To sin means to do something wrong against God. David is telling God he is sorry.
21:9
"Seer" is an older Hebrew title for a prophet, built on the ordinary word for seeing, because such a person received messages as visions. A seer attached to the royal court, as Gad was, delivered God's word directly to the king.
21:12
A famine here means crop failure and mass starvation, the ordinary consequence of drought in a farming economy. "The sword of the LORD" is named in the same breath as plague, the three options are the three great killers of the ancient world: hunger, war, and epidemic. In 2 Samuel 24:13 the first option is seven years rather than three.
21:13
"I am in a great strait" uses "strait" in its old sense of a narrow squeeze, like the straits between two coastlines. David means he is cornered, with no good way out.
21:15
The Jebusites were the people who held Jerusalem before David captured it; Ornan is a Jebusite still living on the land after the conquest of his city. A threshing floor was a flat, hard, exposed patch of ground, usually on a rise where the wind could carry off the chaff, which is why it stood outside the built-up city and was visible from a distance.
21:16
Sackcloth was coarse dark cloth, normally woven from goat hair, worn next to the skin as a public sign of mourning or of pleading with God. Falling face down was the standard posture of submission before a superior.
21:17
"My father's house" means David's whole household and line of descent, not just his immediate family, in ancient legal thinking a household could be held answerable together.
21:18
An altar was a raised platform, usually of stone, where gifts to God were burned.
21:19
To speak "in the name of the LORD" means Gad spoke God's own words, not his own ideas.
21:20
The same man is called Araunah in the parallel account in 2 Samuel 24. Threshing meant driving oxen over the cut stalks to break the grain loose from the husks.
21:21
Bowing with your face to the ground was how people showed great respect to a king.
21:22
Insisting on "the full price" was a legal point as much as a moral one: land acquired by outright purchase, publicly and at market value, could not later be reclaimed by the seller's family, whereas a gift could be disputed.
21:23
A threshing sledge was a heavy wooden board studded on the underside with sharp stones or iron teeth, dragged over the grain by oxen, bulky enough to make substantial firewood. A burnt offering was an animal burned whole on the altar, with none of it eaten. A grain offering was an offering of flour or grain rather than an animal. Ornan is offering the animals, the fuel, and the grain all at once.
21:25
Coined money did not yet exist, so precious metal was weighed out, hence "weighed out." A shekel was roughly eleven or twelve grams, making six hundred shekels somewhere near fifteen pounds of gold. The parallel account in 2 Samuel 24:24 records a much smaller payment, fifty shekels of silver, for the threshing floor and the oxen.
21:26
A peace offering (sometimes called a fellowship offering) was an animal sacrifice of which only certain portions were burned; the rest was eaten as a shared meal by the worshiper and his household. Fire falling from heaven onto an altar appears elsewhere in the Hebrew scriptures as the recognized sign that an offering had been accepted.
21:27
The King James says the angel put his sword back "into the sheath thereof." A sheath is the case a sword slides into when it is not being used.
21:29
The tabernacle was the portable tent-sanctuary built in the wilderness under Moses, the place of national worship before any permanent temple existed. A "high place" was an open-air hilltop shrine; Gibeon lay about six miles northwest of Jerusalem, so the tabernacle and its altar were then a half-day's journey away, while David was standing at a different site altogether.
21:30
To "inquire of God" was a formal procedure, putting a question to God through a priest or prophet at a sanctuary and waiting for an answer, not private prayer.

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