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"Go and tell David, saying, `Thus saith the LORD: I offer thee three things. Choose thee one of them, that I may do it unto thee.'"
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So Gad came to David, and said unto him, "Thus saith the LORD: `Choose thee
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either three years' famine; or three months to be destroyed before thy foes while the sword of thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of the LORD, even the pestilence in the land and the angel of the LORD destroying throughout all the coasts of Israel.' Now therefore advise thyself what word I shall bring back to Him that sent me."
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And David said unto Gad, "I am in dire straits. Let me fall now into the hand of the LORD, for very great are His mercies; but let me not fall into the hand of man."
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So the LORD sent pestilence upon Israel, and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men.
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And God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it; and as he was destroying, the LORD beheld, and He repented of the evil, and said to the angel who destroyed, "It is enough. Stay now thine hand." And the angel of the LORD stood by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
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And David lifted up his eyes and saw the angel of the LORD standing between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders of Israel, who were clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces.
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And David said unto God, "Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered? Even I it is who have sinned and done evil indeed; but as for these sheep, what have they done? Let Thine hand, I pray Thee, O LORD my God, be on me and on my father's house, but not on Thy people, that they should be plagued."
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Then the angel of the LORD commanded Gad to say to David that David should go up and set up an altar unto the LORD on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
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And David went up at the saying of Gad, which he spoke in the name of the LORD.
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And Ornan turned back and saw the angel, and his four sons with him hid themselves. Now Ornan was threshing wheat.