1 Chronicles 21:18-27. Because David has numbered the people of Israel not at the behest of God but out of a sense of pride and power, God has sent a pestilence among the people. David has pleaded with the Lord to punish him rather than the people due to his sin. Here, the angel of the Lord tells David to rear up an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Ornan, the Jebusite. While Ornan is threshing there, he turns and sees the angel of the Lord. His four sons hide in fear, but Ornan continues to watch and sees David approaching. Ornan bows down to David as his king and David says "Give me the site of the threshing floor that I may build on it an altar to the Lord - give it to me at full price - that the plague may be averted from the people." Ornan offers not only the threshing floor but his oxen for burnt offerings, his sledges for wood, and his wheat for a cereal offering, all free of charge. But David insists on paying the full price, and pays Ornan 600 shekels of gold for the site. Then David builds the altar there and presents burnt and peace offerings to the Lord, and the Lord answers with fire from heaven and commands the angel to sheath its sword.

A couple of things occur to me here. First, sacrifice has to cost us something. As much as I, and I'm sure David, can understand Ornan's desire to give his property to David (especially after seeing an angel!), that would not cost David anything. Just as it was David's sin that brought this pestilence on the people, so it is David's sacrifice, not Ornan's, that must be made to lift it. I am guilty of sometimes being like Ornan, I see a need in someone else's life and I try to fill it, often I insist that I be allowed to do so, even when they insist on paying. But this does not help the person nor me. Usually, people must figure out what they need and how to attain it for themselves. If they ask me for help, of course I must give it, but if they also are firm in their need to pay me for my help, I must accept that graciously as well.

Secondly, God does sometimes relent in His punishments. It is hard to understand what this really means because we know that God is unchanging, and that therefore we cannot change God's mind. I think this is a way that God gives us of thinking about Him so that we can understand that our prayers and sacrifices are having an effect, because they are - they are necessary and essential as we participate in God's plan. God's plan is, I believe, made with the understanding of what we are going to do - since He is outside time - but He needs us to understand it as we can. Thus, He allows us to think of Him as getting ready to release retribution on us, and often actually releasing it! By this suffering we are then prompted to offer prayers and sacrifices to avert or lessen it, and then He relents. He was going to do this all along, but only because of the repentance, sacrifices, and prayers that His original retribution elicited in us in response to the suffering we were going through. If we do not repent, He saw that already and then He does not/would not have been going to, relent in His retribution.

It is all very confusing, to say the least, but I think this makes sense, at least to me!