And when the angel stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to
destroy it
Which, as it was perhaps the last place where the people were numbered, it was the last to which the plague came: this angel appeared in an human form, standing "between the earth and the heaven"; in the midst of the heaven, in the air, right over Jerusalem: "having a drawn sword in his hand stretched over the city"; as is said in ( 1 Chronicles 21:16 ) ; which was done as a menace, and to inject terror into David and the inhabitants of the city, and to give them notice of what they must expect:
the Lord repented him of the evil;
he was inflicting, and now threatened Jerusalem with; having compassion on the place where the ark, the symbol of his presence, was, where a temple was to be built to the honour of his name, and where he should be worshipped; and therefore stopped proceeding; as men, when they repent of anything done by them, cease from it, so did the Lord now; otherwise repentance, properly speaking, falls not on him, and so it is next explained:
and said to the angel that destroyed the people;
not the angel of death, the devil, but a good angel, who had a commission from God for this business:
it is enough: stay now thine hand:
there is a sufficient number slay no more:
and the angel of the Lord was by the threshing place of Araunah the
Jebusite;
that is, he was in the air, right over the spot, or near it, where was this man's threshingfloor; and was seen by Araunah and his four sons, who upon it hid themselves, perhaps among the sheaves they were threshing, ( 1 Chronicles 21:20 ) ; and this threshingfloor was on Mount Moriah, ( 2 Chronicles 3:1 ) ; as threshingfloors commonly were on mountains for the sake of winnowing the corn when threshed; (See Gill on Ruth 3:2); who, according to Ben Gersom, though he was by birth a Jebusite, was proselyted to the Jewish religion.