1 Chronicles 21
1NOW when an adversary stood up in Israel and persuaded David to number Israel,
2and king David said to Joab and the chiefs of the army, Go, number Israel from Dan to Bersabee, and let me know the number of them,
3Joab replied, The Lord add to His people a hundred times as many as there are, and may the eyes of my lord the king see it. They are all servants to my lord. Why doth my lord seek this? May it not be a cause of trespass to Israel?
4But the king’s determination prevailed against Joab, so he went forth, and having passed through all Israel, and come to Jerusalem,
5he gave David an account of the review of the people, and the whole number of the men of Israel who drew a sword, was eleven hundred thousand, and the children of Juda were four hundred and seventy thousand men who drew a sword.
6But he did not number Levi and Benjamin among them. Because the king’s word prevailed over Joab,
7and the thing was evil in the sight of God, therefore he smote Israel.
8When David said to God, I have sinned greatly in doing this, now therefore take away, I beseech Thee, this wickedness of Thy servant, for I have acted very foolishly,
9the Lord spoke to Gad, the seer, saying,
10Go, and speak to David, and say, Thus saith the Lord: I offer thee three things, choose for thyself one of them that I may do it to thee.
11So Gad went to David and said to him, Thus saith the Lord: Choose for thyself
12either three years of famine; or three months to flee before thy enemies while the sword of thy enemies is destroying thee; or the sword of the Lord and pestilence for three days throughout the land, while an angel of the Lord is making havoc in all the inheritance of Israel. Now therefore consider. What answer shall I make to Him who sent me?
13Thereupon David said to Gad, Very hard indeed to me are all the three. Let me however fall into the hands of the Lord, for His tender mercies are exceeding great. But let me not fall into the hands of men.
14So the Lord sent a pestilence through Israel, and there fell of the Israelites seventy thousand men.
15And when God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it, and he was making havoc, the Lord looked and relented at the calamity, and said to the destroying angel, Let this suffice thee. Stay thy hand. Now the angel of the Lord was standing at the threshing floor of Orna, the Jebusite.
16And when David raised his eyes and saw the angel of the Lord standing between the earth and heaven, with a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem, he and all the elders being clad in sackcloth, fell on their faces,
17and David said to God, Was it not I who ordered the numbering of the people? I indeed am the sinner. It is I who committed the sin. But as for this flock, what have they done? O Lord my God, Let Thy hand be upon me, and on my father’s house, and not on this Thy people, O Lord, to destruction.
18Thereupon the angel of the Lord ordered Gad to tell David to go up and erect an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Orna the Jebusite.
19So David went up according to the word which Gad spoke in the name of the Lord.
20And when Orna turned and saw the king and his four sons with him, with attendants (now Orna was threshing wheat)
21upon David’s approach to Orna, Orna came out of his threshing floor and made obeisance to David with his face to the ground.
22And David said to Orna, Grant me the place of this threshing floor of thine, that I may build thereon an altar to the Lord—grant it to me for its worth in money, that the plague may be stayed from the people.
23And Orna said to David, Take it for thyself; and let my Lord the king do what is good in his sight. Behold I have given these young bulls for a whole burnt offering, and that plough for wood, and this corn for a sacrifice. Of all these things I make a gift.
24And David said to Orna, By no means: for I must buy them for their worth in money. For I cannot take what are thine for the Lord, to offer a whole burnt offering to the Lord at free cost.
25So David gave Orna for the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight.
26And having built there an altar to the Lord, he offered up the offerings of homage and thanksgiving, and cried to the Lord, and the Lord hearkened to him by fire from heaven upon the altar of the whole burnt offering, which consumed the whole burnt offering.
27Then the Lord spoke to the angel and he sheathed his sword.
28And David saw that the Lord hearkened to him at the threshing floor of Orna the Jebusite, and he sacrificed there at that time,
29though the tabernacle of the Lord which Moses had made in the wilderness, and the altar for whole burnt offerings were at that time at the high place of Gabaon
30(Now he could not go before it to inquire of God, for that would not have accorded with the haste in which he was, on account of the sword of the angel of the Lord).