Did David pay fifty shekels of silver or six hundred of gold?
Fifty shekels of silver bought the threshingfloor and the oxen; six hundred of gold bought “the place,” the site of the temple.
The Passages
2 Samuel 24:24
1 Chronicles 21:25
See Also
2 Chronicles 3:1
The Difficulty
“So David bought the threshingfloor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver” (2 Samuel 24:24). “So David gave to Ornan for the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight” (1 Chronicles 21:25).
The Answer
The two verses name different purchases, and the KJV keeps the difference. Samuel gives the price of “the threshingfloor and the oxen,” bought that day for the sacrifice that stayed the plague. Chronicles gives the price of “the place” (Hebrew maqom), the whole site, which David then knew was to be the house of the LORD: “This is the house of the LORD God, and this is the altar of the burnt offering for Israel” (1 Chronicles 22:1). It became the site of Solomon’s temple, “in mount Moriah … in the place that David had prepared in the threshingfloor of Ornan” (2 Chronicles 3:1). A threshingfloor is a small circle of beaten ground; the place was the hilltop on which the temple and its courts were built.
Gill says “learned men have not been able to give a better solution of this difficulty.”
Sources
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The first was of the threshing-floor, oxen and instruments, which were bought for 50 shekels of silver, as here, and the other was a purchase of the place, as it is called in the book of Chronicles; that large space of ground on which afterwards the temple, and all the courts adjoining to it, were built.
Checked against: Internet Archive scan of the first edition, 2026-10-23 -
That David purchased, first, the threshing-floor — a plat of ground “probably not 100 feet in diameter,” with the oxen; then, afterwards, bethought himself to buy the place, “maqom,” — the whole hill of Moriah, — for which latter he paid “600 shekels of gold.”
Checked against: Internet Archive scan of the 1874 edition, 2026-10-19
