David Building an Altar (2 Sam 24:18-25)
Yahweh responds to David’s self-sacrifice by sending Gad
the seer to declare to David, “to build an altar on the threshing floor of
Araunah the Jebusite” (2 Sam 24:18). Gad’s message implies that building an
altar is how to stop the plague (2 Sam 24:18). David entrusted the nation of
Israel with Yahweh’s mercy, and he responded with a place where atonement for
sin could be found. David offered himself up as a willing sacrifice, but Yahweh
reoriented David and the people to an altar. The burnt offering takes the place
of David and his household (Lev 4:3), and it provided a picture of a king-priest
interceding for Israel through self-sacrifice. Yahweh provides a place where
David and Israel can find atonement, and the altar serves Israel after 2 Sam
24. Thus, the altar serves as a forward pointing device to the redemption of
Yahweh’s people.
Altars served as a place for sacrifices or offerings and
often became a center for communicating with Yahweh. Although the temple is not
mentioned within this narrative, the description builds upon the Mosaic promise
that Yahweh will choose a place for his name to dwell (Deut 12:11). The significance
of David’s altar is that he has already centralized the cult in Jerusalem when
he brought up the ark of the covenant (2 Sam 6). Yahweh promised that David’s
descendant would build a temple (2 Sam 7:13), and David building an altar
anticipates one of his descendants building a temple.
The altar pointed beyond David to another king-priest who
would stand in the gap between Yahweh and Israel. The narrative anticipates
before 2 Sam 24 that one of Adam’s offspring would conquer the Serpent through
suffering (Gen 3:15). This image is later expressed in Abraham offering his
son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah (Gen 22; John 1:29; 3:16; Heb 11:17-19). However,
Yahweh prevented Abraham from offering his son and provided a ram in his place
(Gen 22:13-14). Similarly, David offers up himself and his family to prevent
Yahweh’s wrath, and Yahweh provides a place where atonement for sin could be
found. The Chronicler connects David’s altar to Abraham in 2 Chr 3:1, “Then
Solmon began to build the house of Yahweh in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where
Yahweh had appeared to David his father, at that place David had appointed, on
the threshing floor or Ornan the Jebusite.” J. Robert Vannoy states:
The altar on the threshing floor of Araunah pointed
forward to another place of atonement near the city of Jerusalem that was far
more significant. It was at Golgotha (Matt 27:33) that Jesus reconciled the
world unto himself (2 Cor 5:19) because there “God made Christ, who never
sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God
through Christ” (2 Cor 5:21). (Vannoy, 1-2 Samuel, 431)
Although 2 Sam 24 does not mention the temple, the
audience would have known that the temple site and the altar were in the same
place. The book of Samuel ends by highlighting that David is not the king-priest
that Hannah prayed for in 1 Sam 2:10 or the man of God predicted in 2:35-36.
David’s sin (2 Sam 11) brought destruction upon Israel. Although he repents of
his sin, the narrative anticipates a descendant who will build the temple and
whose throne Yahweh will establish forever. (Nicholas Majors, The King-Priest
in Samuel: A Messianic Motif [Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2023], 190-91)
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