Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Chronicles 21:27

"And Jehovah commanded the angel; and he put up his sword again into the sheath thereof." — 1 Chronicles 21:27 (ASV)

He put up ... —It seems hardly fair to call this verse a “figurative or poetical expression for the cessation of the plague.” In 1 Chronicles 21:16 David sees the angel with a drawn sword; and the older text (2 Samuel 24:16–17) equally makes the angel a “real concrete being,” and not a “personification,” as Reuss will have it.

Sheath (nâdân). —A word only found here. A very similar term is applied to the body as the sheath of the soul in Daniel 7:15; namely, the Aramaic, nidneh, which should, perhaps, be read here.

1 Chronicles 21:28 to 1 Chronicles 22:1. These concluding remarks are not found in Samuel, but the writer, no doubt, found some basis for them in his special source. They tell us how it was that Ornan’s threshingfloor became recognized as a permanent sanctuary, and the site ordained for the future Temple. They thus form a transition to the account of David’s preparations for the building (1 Chronicles 22:2–19).