1 Chronicles 21:15 -

And God sent an angel . It is at this point first that any mention of an angel is found in the parallel place, but then not in the present form, but in a sentence which would seem to presuppose the knowledge of the agency of an angel on the occasion: "And when the angel stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord repented him of the evil" ( 2 Samuel 24:16 ). Stood by the threshing-floor of Ornan . The verb "stood" is employed here quite generically. It does not imply that the angel stood on the ground; for see next verse, in which it is said that he "stood between the earth and the heaven," the Hebrew verb being exactly the same. Ornan is the uniform form and spelling of the name in Chronicles. In Samuel, however, the name appears as אֲרַנְוָה ( 2 Samuel 24:20 ), or Araunah. Yet in 1 Chronicles 21:16 , of the same chapter the Kethiv inverts the order of the resh and vau , prefixing the article, or what looks like it, and again in 1 Chronicles 21:18 the Kethiv shows the form אֲרַנְיָה . Ornan, then, or Arauuah, was a descendant of the old Jebusite race to whom the fort of Zion once belonged. And the present narrative finds him living on the Hill of Moriah. The threshing-floor. The primitive threshing-floors of the Israelites still essentially obtain. They were level spots of stamped and well-trodden earth, about fifty feet in diameter, and selected in positions most exposed to the wind, in order to take the advantage of its help in the separating of the grain from the chaff. On these circular spots of hard earth the sheaves of grain, of whatever kind, were distributed in all sorts of disorder. Oxen and other cattle trod them. And sometimes these beasts were driven round and round five abreast. The stalk of the grain was, of course, much bruised and crushed, and the method is described still as of a very rough and wasteful kind. Instruments were also employed, as the "flail" ( Ruth 2:17 ; Isaiah 28:27 , Isaiah 28:28 ); the "sledge," to which possibly reference is made in 8:7 , 8:16 , under the name barkanim (Authorized Version, "briers"). These sledges were of two kinds: