And Ornan turned back, and saw the angel; and his four sons with him hid themselves. Now Ornan was threshing wheat.
Ornan turned back, and saw the angel, [The Septuagint has: kai epestrepsen Orna, kai eide ton basilea, and Ornan turned back, and saw the king. This is the reading in 2 Samuel 24:20.]
Ornan was threshing wheat, х chiTiym (H2406), plural, grains of wheat; daash (H1758), was treading out wheat; Septuagint, een alooon purous, was bruising, crushing wheat]. In later times the Jews appear to have used threshing instruments (cf. Isaiah 41:15), [and the verb х daash (H1758)], was treading, may have been retained in common use, merely from the early custom of triturating by oxen (Sir G. Wilkinson, in Rawlinson's 'Herodotus,' 2:, p. 22). If the census was entered upon in autumn, the beginning of the civil year, the nine and a half months it occupied would end at wheat harvest. The common way of threshing grain is by spreading it out on a high level area, and driving backwards and forwards upon it two oxen harnessed to a clumsy sledge with three rollers and some sharp spikes. The drive sits on his knees on the box, while another peasant is employed in drawing back the straw and separating it from the grain underneath. By this operation the chaff is very much chopped, and the grain threshed out.