God’s Word for You
1 Chronicles 21:14-15 Repentance
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Wednesday, February 28, 2024
14 So the LORD sent a plague against Israel, and 70,000 men of Israel fell. 15 Also, God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it, but as he was about to destroy it, the LORD saw, and he relented from the calamity. Then he said to the destroying angel, “It is enough; drop your hand.” And the angel of the LORD was standing by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
Remember that we show our contrition with our lives, but it must live in our hearts and not merely in our actions. “The thief must no longer steal” (Ephesians 4:28). Or as John Chrysostom said, “In the heart, contrition. In the mouth, confession. In the deed, complete humility.”
The plague that the Lord sent against Israel was a destroying angel (malach mashchit). We know for certain that this was one of God’s good angels and not one of the wicked demons because the nation and the city of Jerusalem did not fall into the hands of anyone apart from God. The good angels fill many roles in God’s kingdom. They worship him (Psalm 148:2); they carry out his commands (Daniel 7:10); they are ministering spirits sent to help God’s people (Hebrews 1:14); they accompany the revelation of God’s holy word (the giving of the Law, the incarnation of Christ, the struggle in Gethsemane, the resurrection, etc.), and they protect believers and the elect (Psalm 91:11; Hebrews 1:14). They punish God’s enemies (2 Kings 19:35; Genesis 19:13), they assist the government of the world (Daniel 6:22); and they protect against danger (Isaiah 37:36). They also accompany the church in worship (Galatians 3:19), its individual members (Matthew 18:10; Acts 10:30), and even accompany Christians in death as their souls are taken to heaven (Luke 16:22). This angel did God’s bidding, and if we had to find a category from the above list, it would surely be “to carry out God’s commands.”
As the angel was moving to destroy Jerusalem, the Lord stopped him. The basic meaning of the word I’ve translated “relent” is to be sorry or be moved with compassion. From a human point of view, the Lord seemed to change his mind, when in fact his will was to change David’s heart and to strike a memorable lesson had been accomplished. The Lord’s outcry to his angel, “Enough!” shows his compassion, and it is a proclamation of the gospel.
Also, God did not want to destroy the place where his ark was. The Lord used this precise moment to stop the angel to draw attention to the location of the threshing floor of Ornah (also called Araunah, 2 Samuel 24:16), a Jebusite. Recall that the Jebusites were the original inhabitants of the city when David conquered it. Ornah must have survived the attack and conquest and been allowed to continue to farm above (north) of the city. His threshing floor was going to become the location of the temple when it would be built by David’s son Solomon (we will meditate more about this with verse 18 below).
Some readers may wonder whether “the angel of the LORD” toward the end of verse 15 is “the Angel of the LORD,” that is, an appearance of the Son of God before his incarnation here in the Old Testament. Unfortunately, there have been times in the past when some different means of identifying the Angel of the LORD have been published, even within our own circles. We would hope that most translations would get this right, but a translator is not infallible. Neither is an editor. The only way to understand the identity of a reference to “angel of the LORD” (the pre-incarnate Christ, or an “ordinary” angel?) comes from the context of the things (1) that he says (if they are things only God would say, such as when the Angel said, “I brought you up out of Egypt,” Judges 2:1), or (2) things that are said about him, such as when Hagar says to the Angel of the LORD, “You are the God who sees me” (Genesis 16:7).
Here in this moment, as the angel stands with his sword drawn over Mount Zion, we see the same thing that would happen when the Lord withdrew his destroying hand from over Nineveh in the days of Jonah. Then the prophet preached that they would be destroyed in forty days, the whole city repented, put on sackcloth, and rubbed ashes into their hair. They declared a fast for everyone and they even imposed the fast on their donkeys and other animals. But the main part of their repentance was stated by their king, and not by the prophet: “Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and turn with compassion from his fierce anger so that we will not perish” (Jonah 3:7-8). And this is just what happened when our Lord Jesus paid the penalty of our guilt on the cross. The Lord’s hand was raised, but he turned back his wrath on account of the Savior who came between the Father’s wrath and our guilt. The Lord relented and turned with compassion from his fierce anger so that we will never perish, but have eternal life.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.