The Bible | The Rabbit Hole of Discovery
While writing the Leper Messiah, there were a few times when I went down the rabbit hole.
One of those times took place while I was writing chapter two entitled “The Lion and the Lamb“.
The scene was when David is on the threshing floor.
Excerpt from the Leper Messiah:
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David watched the chaff from the barley bow over the fields and valleys and wondered how far he might travel from this threshing floor.
He saw beyond the heat of the day and the harsh world his family lived in for it was here on this Bethlehem threshing floor that he witnessed his past and future.
My intuition took hold and forced me to look closely at this strange but simple farming floor.
At its most basic it is a place to separate the wheat from the chaff, but then I remembered that David, on first taking the city of Jebus, purchased a threshing floor and that the first temple was built on that very same threshing floor.
Why?
Why would David need to purchase anything in a city he took by force, and why then was the first temple built on this very site?
Purchase of the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite – II Samuel 24 18-25 King James Version:
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18 And Gad came that day to David, and said unto him, Go up, rear an altar unto the Lord in the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
19 And David, according to the saying of Gad, went up as the Lord commanded.
20 And Araunah looked, and saw the king and his servants coming on toward him: and Araunah went out, and bowed himself before the king on his face upon the ground.
21 And Araunah said “Wherefore is my lord the king come to his servant?” And David said, “To buy the threshing floor of thee, to build an altar unto the Lord, that the plague may be stayed from the people.”
22 And Araunah said unto David, Let my lord the king take and offer up what seemeth good unto him: behold, here be oxen for burnt sacrifice, and threshing instruments and other instruments of the oxen for wood.
23 All these things did Araunah, as a king, give unto the king. And Araunah said unto the king, The Lord thy God accept thee.
24 And the king said unto Araunah, “Nay; but I will surely buy it of thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.
25 And David built there an altar unto the Lord and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So the Lord was intreated for the land, and the plague was stayed from Israel.
I mention this is because, during the writing of this book, I followed many paths and found fascinating points that started at a basic level and turned into something much more.
John the Baptist continues this powerful motif in Matthew 3:12-17 International Standard Version:
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“His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He shall clear His threshing floor and gather His wheat into the barn, but the chaff He shall burn up with inextinguishable fire.”
After much stumbling around in the dark, I came across the idea that the threshing floor symbol is Gods’ judgment and how he separates the good from the bad.
However, none of this would have come about had I not journeyed down that rabbit hole of discovery!
Robert