The angel of the LORD told Gad to command David to go and build an altar to the LORD at Araunah's threshing place.

There at the threshing place Araunah and his four sons were threshing wheat, and when they saw the angel, the sons ran and hid.

David said to him, "Sell me your threshing place, so that I can build an altar to the LORD, to stop the epidemic. I'll give you the full price."

But the king answered, "No, I will pay you the full price. I will not give as an offering to the LORD something that belongs to you, something that costs me nothing."

He built an altar to the LORD there and offered burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. He prayed, and the LORD answered him by sending fire from heaven to burn the sacrifices on the altar.

David saw by this that the LORD had answered his prayer, so he offered sacrifices on the altar at Araunah's threshing place.

He was afraid and said, "What a terrifying place this is! It must be the house of God; it must be the gate that opens into heaven."

Out of the territory of all your tribes the LORD will choose the one place where the people are to come into his presence and worship him.

There, in the presence of the LORD your God, who has blessed you, you and your families will eat and enjoy the good things that you have worked for.

That same day Gad went to David and said to him, "Go up to Araunah's threshing place and build an altar to the LORD."

King David, Solomon's father, had already prepared a place for the Temple. It was in Jerusalem, on Mount Moriah, where the LORD appeared to David, at the place which Araunah the Jebusite had used as a threshing place. King Solomon began the construction

'From the time I brought my people out of Egypt until now, I did not choose any city in the land of Israel as the place to build a temple where I would be worshiped, and I did not choose anyone to lead my people Israel.

But now I have chosen Jerusalem as the place where I will be worshiped, and you, David, to rule my people.' "

He abandoned his tent in Shiloh, the home where he had lived among us.

But he rejected the descendants of Joseph; he did not select the tribe of Ephraim.

There he built his Temple like his home in heaven; he made it firm like the earth itself, secure for all time.

The LORD has chosen Zion; he wants to make it his home:

"This is where I will live forever; this is where I want to rule.

"My Samaritan ancestors worshiped God on this mountain, but you Jews say that Jerusalem is the place where we should worship God."

You Samaritans do not really know whom you worship; but we Jews know whom we worship, because it is from the Jews that salvation comes.

The Assyrian official went on, "Or will you tell me that you are relying on the LORD your God? It was the LORD's shrines and altars that Hezekiah destroyed, when he told the people of Judah and Jerusalem to worship only at the altar in Jerusalem.

He is the one who destroyed the LORD's shrines and altars and then told the people of Judah and Jerusalem to worship and burn incense at one altar only.