Araunah, also called Ornan the Jebusite, was a Gentile who owned the threshing floor on Mount Moriah for a long time. David bought that threshing floor from him after the plague stopped there (II Samuel 24), and David's son Solomon later built the first Temple on the same mountain (II Chronicles 3:1). Mount Moriah, one of the mountains in Jerusalem, is the place God sent Abraham to offer Isaac. Moriah means "Yah sees," and by extension God sees needs and provides for them. The land of Moriah was part of the Jebus region, which Abraham had never visited before this command, so the place where Araunah's threshing floor later stood is the site God had marked out for Abraham's test.

Araunah (called Ornan in II Chronicles) was the Jebusite whose threshing floor sat on Mount Moriah. After David's census brought a plague, God sent Gad to tell David to raise an altar there. Araunah bowed to the king and offered the threshing floor, the oxen for sacrifice, and the threshing instruments for wood, giving everything as a king would. David refused to take it free, saying he would not offer to the Lord that which cost him nothing. He bought the threshing floor and oxen for fifty shekels of silver, built an altar, and offered burnt and peace offerings, and the plague was stayed. That is a great principle. Solomon later built the Temple, the house of the Lord, on this same threshing floor, on Mount Moriah where the Lord appeared to David. The mount already belonged to God before Araunah owned it and before David bought it, as Abraham knew when he called it the Lord's mount. The Temple therefore stands on Araunah's threshing floor, which is part of Moriah and became known as the Temple Mount. Abraham's altar for Isaac was not on the mount with Araunah's threshing floor but on an adjacent one, from which he looked toward it. This Temple Mount is the same location as the Garden of Eden.

Araunah was the man from whom David purchased the threshingfloor that became the Temple mount, where the Temple was to be built. Araunah knew who David was, and when the king came to buy his land, he offered to give it to him freely, along with animals for burnt offerings to God. David refused, saying he would not offer to the Lord burnt offerings that cost him nothing (II Samuel 24:24). He insisted on paying, and bought the threshingfloor and oxen for fifty shekels of silver. From this comes the principle that a sacrifice with no cost to the giver is no sacrifice, since nothing of oneself is given up. God values not merely the size of a gift but its cost to the giver, as with Abraham's offering of Isaac and the widow's two mites. This helps explain why God called David a man after His own heart. David's offering for the Temple was enormous, equal to roughly a billion and a half dollars in today's money, and it cost him dearly. David also understood that the deeper sacrifice God wants is a broken and contrite heart, the surrender of one's own will, pride, and human nature.