David’s altar on Ornan’s floor; type of Christ’s mystery

—site. And David said to the Lord, when he saw the angel striking in the people, and said: Behold I am the shepherd, I have sinned, and I the shepherd have done evil; and these the sheep what have they done? Let your hand come to be then upon me, and upon my father’s house. And Gad came to David on that day, and said to him: Go up, and set for the Lord an altar in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite. And David went up according to the word of Gad the prophet, in the manner the Lord commanded him; and Ornan looked down, and saw the king and his servants going across above him; and Ornan went out, and bowed to the king upon his face upon the earth. And Ornan said: Why has my lord the king come toward his servant? And David said: To acquire from you the threshing-floor to build an altar to the Lord, and that the breaking be held back from above the people. And Ornan said to David: Let my lord the king take and offer up to the Lord what is good in his eyes; behold the oxen for whole-burnt-offering, and the wheels and the vessels of the oxen for wood. Ornan gave all things to the king. And Ornan said to the king: The Lord your God bless you. And the king said to Ornan: No; but acquiring I will acquire from you in exchange. And I will not offer up to the Lord my God a whole-burnt-offering as a gift. And David acquired threshing-floor and the oxen for silver of fifty shekels, and David built there an altar to the Lord, and offered up whole-burnt-offerings and peace-offerings. And Solomon added unto the altar at the last, because it was small at first. And the Lord listened to the earth, and the breaking was held back from above Israel.

Palladius: And what again would the mind be in these things? how altogether hard to reach the contemplation.

Cyril: Hard to reach, yes, by confession, and hard to capture truly. Yet I say that—the insight of what lies before, having brought it together very well in few things, and turned it round unto mind. Observe then, Palladius, as in a mirror and in thin imaginings the mystery of Christ, and the manner of the economy upon us.

Palladius: Therefore you yourself would do this well, God supplying the being able to understand.

Cyril: Listen then. For I will already walk unto the need to speak. From divine anger death was pastured upon the Lord’s people, and until the hour of the meal, nothing preventing, the destroyer had strength; and when about to cast his hand upon them unto Jerusalem, God checks him; and having seen the angel, David was entreating the Lord, saying he himself had erred; and that it is better and more just that the shepherd and leader die rather than the sheep, because of knowing nothing; then God signaling, he raises an altar in Ornan’s threshing-floor, which together with the threshing oxen he bought for fifty shekels. And when he had built the divine altar very well, he was completing the sacrifices upon it, whole-burnt-offerings and peace-offerings;