Araunah

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Araunah is the name given by the Books of Samuel to a Jebusite who owned a threshing floor that was purchased by David and turned into an altar. The Book of Chronicles, a later text, renders his name as Ornan.

1 Biblical narrative
2 The census
3 Identity of Araunah
4 The threshing floor
5 Notes and citations

[edit] Biblical narrative

The narrative concerning Araunah appears at 2 Samuel 24, as the final member of a non-chronologically ordered group of narratives, which together constitute the appendix of the Books of Samuel. In the narrative, Yahweh incites David to punish the Israelites by imposing a census upon them, an order which Joab reluctantly carries out. Yahweh regarded David's action as a sin, and so punished him, sending Gad (a prophet) to offer David the choice of punishment; Gad gave David three options:

seven years of famine (the Book of Chronicles states that it was only three years of famine)
three months of fleeing from an invader
three days of plague

David, according to the narrative, chose the three days of plague, and so an angel was sent to spread the plague through the land. However, when the angel reached Jerusalem, Yahweh changed his mind and ordered the angel to stop; at this point the angel was at Araunah's threshing floor, which David noticed. Gad instructed David to build an altar at Araunah's threshing floor, so David purchased the location from Araunah, even though Araunah offered it to him freely. According to the Books of Samuel, David paid 50 silver shekels for the location, but in the Book of Chronicles it states that David paid 600 gold shekels.

Yahweh's punishment of David for doing something that Yahweh had incited David to do seems somewhat unjust; in the version of the narrative presented by the Book of Chronicles, it is Satan, not Yahweh, that incites David to make the census.

[edit] The census

In the Books of Samuel, the census is said to indicate that there were 1,300,000 men fit for military service, suggesting a general population of 6 or 7 million. The Book of Chronicles states that the figure was 1,570,000 men fit for military service. These figures are, however, somewhat implausible; there are only about 1,080,000 military personel in late 20th century North Korea, a much larger country, and one of the most heavily militarised in the world; there were only about 500,000 soldiers in the entire Roman Empire.

Joab's reluctance to complete the census is thought by some scholars to have been due to a religious belief that the people belonged to God, and hence that only God should know how many there were^[1]. However, other scholars believe that a more mundane motive is the reason - that the knowledge gained from a census would enable David to impose more accurate taxes and levies, and thus the census would be unpopular with the people who were at risk of higher taxes or levies^[2].

[edit] Identity of Araunah

Though as a Hebrew name Araunah would mean agile. However, as Araunah is clearly indicated to be a Jebusite, an ethnic group that most scholars believe refers to the Hittites, since the discovery of the Hittite language it has been known that, as a Hittite word, Araunah means the lord, and is not a personal name but a title^[3]. At one point in the narrative, Araunah is explicitely referred to as a king : ... Araunah the king gave to the king [ie. David] ...^[4], and several biblical scholars believe that he may have simply been the (Jebusite) king of Jerusalem at that time^[5]. Some scholars believe that Adonijah (whom the Bible portrays as a son of David and rival of Solomon) is actually a disguised reference to Araunah, the ר (r) having been corrupted to ד (d); this position stems from the reverse conjecture originally proposed by Cheyne, before the Hittite language was fully known.

[edit] The threshing floor

Threshing floors would usually be in places likely to catch the wind - so that the wind would assist the separation of wheat from chaff, and hence it is plausible for the threshing floor to have been located on a high hill. The narrative of the Book of Chronicles claims that the altar built by David on the site became the Temple of Solomon, and that the site had formerly been Mount Moriah; the equation of the Temple of Solomon with mount Moriah is viewed as dubious by many scholars, though David's altar being the same site as Solomon's temple is seen as plausible^[6].

The entire narrative is considered by most scholars to be more aetiological than historic - that it exists to explain why the site was regarded as a place of holiness by the Israelites^[7]. In an earlier narrative - the genesis narrative concerning Melchizedek - it is clear that Jerusalem (which is what most scholars think is meant by Salem) had a priesthood in pre-David times, and hence that it must have had some sort of sanctuary, probably at a high location^[8]. Some scholars have proposed that this pre-existing sanctuary, probably dedicated to Zedek rather than Yahweh, is what became Solomon's Temple, and that the Araunah narrative is an attempt to provide a Yahweh-related origin for it; connected with this proposal is the theory that Zadok is actually a priest from this earlier sanctuary, his Aaronid genealogy being a later fiction^[9], with Zadok possibly being identical to Araunah himself^[10].