11
So Gad came to David and said unto him, Thus hath the LORD said, Choose thee,
12
either three years’ famine or three months to be destroyed before thy foes while the sword of thine enemies overtakes
thee or else three days
of the sword of the LORD, even the pestilence, in the land, and the angel of the LORD destroying throughout all the borders of Israel. Now therefore advise thyself what word I shall bring again to him that sent me.
13
Then David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait; let me fall now into the hand of the LORD, for very great
are his mercies, but do not let me fall into the hand of man.
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So the LORD sent pestilence upon Israel; and seventy thousand men of Israel fell.
15
And God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it; and as he was destroying, the LORD beheld, and he repented of that evil and said to the angel that destroyed, It is enough, stay now thy hand. And the angel of the LORD stood by the threshingfloor of Ornan, the Jebusite.
16
And David lifted up his eyes and saw the angel of the LORD stand between the heaven and the earth, 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.
17
And David said unto God,
Is it not I
that commanded the people to be numbered? Even I it is that have sinned and done evil indeed; but
as for these sheep, what have they done? Let thy hand, I pray thee, O LORD my God, be against me and against my father’s house, but not on thy people, that they should be plagued.
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Then the angel of the LORD told Gad to tell David that David should go up and set up an altar unto the LORD in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite.
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And David went up according to the word of Gad, which he had spoken unto him in the name of the LORD.
20
And Ornan turned back and saw the angel, and his four sons with him hid themselves. Now Ornan was threshing wheat.
21
And as David came to Ornan, Ornan looked and saw David and went out of the threshingfloor and bowed himself to David with
his face to the ground.