David built an altar to the Lord there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. He called on the Lord, and the Lord answered him with fire from heaven on the altar of burnt offering. Then the Lord spoke to the angel, and he put his sword back into its sheath (vv. 26-27).

Then, the plague that was killing thousands of people stopped. Sickness came as a result of sin, and is a curse.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field (Gen 3:18).

When “thorns and thistles” are eaten as “the plants of the field,” they hurt our body internally, and destroy it. If it is interpreted spiritually, it means idolatry that corrupts Israel from within, rather than the external attack from their enemies.

Instead, they will become snares and traps for you, whips on your backs and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land, which the Lord your God has given you (Josh 23:13).

Sickness comes because of the drawn sward in the stretched hand of the angel who stands between heaven and earth. But we know that when the altar was built, and a sacrifice was given, the sickness ceased. It was, in fact, as this sacrifice that Jesus Christ gave himself.

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe (John 19:1-2) …

Both the flogging of whips and the crown of thorns he received symbolize the sickness and the pain that he took up on him.

Surely he took up our infirmities (lit. sickness) and carried our sorrows (lit. pain), yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted (Isa 53:4).

Jesus did not get sick, but eliminated the very source of the sickness and diseases that had come to humanity as curses.

Another thing that needs to be paid attention to in the aforementioned story of David is the fact that the atonement for the plague took place on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. A threshing floor is a flat place where a farmer threshes the grain harvest and then winnows it separating the grain from the straw and the chaff. It is easy to see how such a place came to be used symbolically to mean a place where God’s judgment is decided and announced. For instance, when David tried to bring the ark of God to his town in Jerusalem, it was on a threshing floor that Uzza who guided the cart that carried the ark was instantly killed. It was God’s judgment against David who did not do it in a proper manner. Gideon placed a fleece on the threshing floor and asked God to bring dew on it and let all the ground stay dry. For him the small fleece represented his army, and the wide ground the vast army of the Midianites. He wanted to know if God was able to bring victory (dew) to his small army and destruction (dryness) to the enemy while both armies were close to each other in the same place. It was also on the threshing floor that Boaz made a decision to redeem Ruth the Moabitess together with Naomi’s land. Boaz is the type of Christ, and Ruth is the type of the church, his bride. A threshing floor is figuratively the sacred place between heaven and earth, and it was on the threshing floor of Jerusalem where David built an altar and later, the temple came to be built on the same spot.

You as a living stone are built upon Christ who is the foundation. The angel who stands between heaven and earth is now for you, and you are completely free from all curses, and have only blessings from God.