There seems to be a clear contradiction between two chapters of the Old Testament. In 2 Samuel chapter 24, it says that King David paid Araunah 50 shekels of silver for his land, while in 1 Chronicles chapter 24, King David gave Araunah 600 shekels of gold. These are two very different amounts of money!
The sequence of events presented in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21 is demonstrably consistent; we found the angel of plague stopped by the field of Araunah, David went there, and with the help of Prophet Gad, he wanted to give sacrifices to God to redeem himself and his people, he asked 1st to buy the threshing floor and oxen. So 2nd Samuel clarifies that the fifty shekels of silver were paid for the specific small area used for processing grain and the oxen only, not the whole land. This makes more sense as he wouldn’t carry such a huge amount of gold to buy the whole land belonging to Araunah.
If we use Strong’s Dictionary, we find that “threshing floor” ( גּרן- gôren) comes from an unused root meaning to smooth; a threshing floor (as made even); by analogy any open area: – (barn, corn, threshing-) floor, (threshing-, void) place. The same meaning is also found in Bron’s dictionary. This word wasn’t mentioned in 1 Chronicles 21, so David gave Araunah 600 shekels of gold by weight for the whole place, not only the threshing floor. First Chronicles explains that the 600 shekels of gold were paid for “the site” (the entire field). This larger site is the same place where Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice, and the exact location where Solomon would later build the Great Temple. It is logically inconsistent to suggest that Solomon’s magnificent Temple was built only upon the small threshing floor area.
So, combining the 2 chapters, we can conclude that they have the same story with the same sequence of events; the only difference is that 2nd Samuel mentioned how much David paid for the threshing floor (50 shekels of silver), while 2nd Chronicles mentioned how he paid for the whole land (600 shekels of gold).
Reference:
– حلمي القمص يعقوب – كتاب النقد الكتابي: مدارس النقد والتشكيك والرد عليها (العهد القديم من الكتاب المقدس)
