So the Lord sent pestilence upon Israel: and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men. And God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it: and as he was destroying, the Lord beheld, and he repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed, It is enough, stay now thine hand. And the angel of the Lord stood by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the Lord stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders of Israel, who were clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces. 1 Chron 21:14-16)… And the Lord commanded the angel; and he put up his sword again into the sheath thereof. At that time when David saw that the Lord had answered him in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite, then he sacrificed there. (1 Chron 21:27-28)… Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem in mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had prepared in the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. (2 Chron 3:1).Before, I always missed the significance of the threshing floor. It seemed that David merely wanted to pay a fair price for a place to build his altar to God. That seems honorable and reasonable. Why would the Lord punish Israel with pestilence? He did a census of fighting men; he was measuring his power.
We know from scripture that God felled the walls of Jericho with the hand of no men. At that time, Joshua had faith in the Lord for deliverance. Any time the Lord delivers the Hebrew people in scripture, it is a foreshadowing of "Joshua's" (Jesus's) salvation. David was preparing to save himself, and compared armies to do so. Israel had 1,100,000 fighting men, Judah 470,000 soldiers, and the tribes of Levi and Benjamin were not counted upon for anything.
David depended on Israel for numbers to defend itself against Judah. He counted the Lord for naught. That lack of faith disappointed the Lord, and he threshed Israel for David's lack of faith!
Ornan (Araunah or Araniah) owned the threshing floor where the prophet Gad had instructed an altar to be built. "The name Araniah can be seen as the word ארן plus יה (Yah) = יהו (Yahu) = יו (Yu), which in turn are abbreviated forms of the Tetragrammaton יהוה, YHWH or Yahweh. The meaning may be "Yahweh Is Firm." (Abarim Publications: "Araunah" and "Araniah"). That makes sense because God was firm with Israel there, costing David 70,000 men of Jerusalem through a plague.
God is indeed firm in his justice, and on Ornan's threshing floor, threshed the Israelites for their insult. We know from scripture that the line of Japheth would come to "dwell" or worship in the "tents" of Shem (Gen 9:27). With a little poetic justice the permanent "tent" - Solomon's Temple would be built on Ham's Land as Ornan was a Jebusite and of the line of Ham!
Now back to threshing: God brought up Nebuchadnezzar to thresh the Jews not many years after Israel was threshed and winnowed (the Diaspora). God doesn't need numbers, we remember; He wants faithful men. After Jerusalem was threshed by the Babylonian Empire, the Lord, by grace, made Cyrus powerful (Isaiah 45).
He allowed Jerusalem's wall and temple to be rebuilt (Nehemiah). God's M.O. when threshing is to thresh, winnow, and then preserve the good grain. According to the New Testament Parable of the Sower (Mat 13:3-8), the threshing floor has great significance, and the threshing at Jerusalem was a foreshadowing of that. In that parable, the threshing floor was natural: thorns, birds, and rocks did the threshing but "good" ground made much fruit. God even counted the fruit! The "good" ground is dependence on the Lord for the harvest. David had not done that.
David planned a temple on Araniah's threshing floor after God told David that he didn't need a house. We find from the Parable of the Sower that God still does not. He threshes using things made by His hands. Just as He didn't need David's soldiers, He didn't need the sower to sow only on good ground. Only God is good (Mat 19:17), and it must be on His solid ground - "Yahweh is firm" or Araniah.
It turned out that God didn't need His temple to thresh. He could do it anywhere there was rocky and solid ground. He didn't even need the Jews. His sowers were Jews but the reapers were Gentiles. They grew on the good ground. That outcome was Japheths living in the tents of Shems', just as God planned from the time the earth was re-created. The tents of Japheth are the souls of Christians. We are the temples of God (1 Cor 6:9). Those "tents" came from the Shemites' want of buildings.
The Church is Japheth's 'Tent." It is nomadic and invisible, and can be moved worldwide. The purpose of the Church is like Ornan's threshing floor and the Parable of the Sower. Mankind doesn't do the threshing but God. Just as the prophet Esra merely read scripture, and God planted the seed, preachers are the sowers and God does the threshing.
Ironically, beneath the foundation stone (Ornan's threshing stone) lies an unexplored abyss. Jews believe it is the access to Hades. That's where the chaff will be burned according to John the Baptist, "He (Jesus) shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire" (Mat 3:11-12). Ornan's threshing floor represents God's winnowing fan, the purge on His floor, and its chaff sent to the fire beneath the threshing stone. Of course the Lord will garner the wheat left on the threshing stone. That is God having Church!
Ornan's threshing floor points to Jesus as the Thresher. That "story" is in scripture for a purpose - to understand the Purpose of Jesus. God showed His face to some who will die for not recognizing it, and for others to live because they do!
No comments:
Post a Comment