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 threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite.
Sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it. The infliction only of the pestilence is here noticed, without any account of its duration or its ravages. while a minute description is given of the visible appearance and menacing attitude of the destroying angel. (As to the reality of this angelic appearance, and the insuperable objections to the opinion that the "angel" was only a bold figure or poetical description of the pestilence, see the notes at 2 Sam.)
Stood by the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite. Ornan was probably his Hebrew or Jewish, Araunah his Jebusite or Canaanite name. Whether he was the old king of Jebus, as that title is given to him, 2 Samuel 24:23, or not, he had been converted to the worship of the true God, and was possessed both of property and influence.