1 Chronicles 21
1 Satan rose against Israel and incited David to count Israel.
2 David said to Joab and the leaders of the people, “Go, count Israel from Beersheba to Dan, and bring me the result so I may know their number.”
3 Joab said, “May the LORD add to his people a hundred times as many as they are. My lord the king, are they not all servants of my lord? Why does my lord ask this? Why should it bring guilt on Israel?”
4 But the king’s command prevailed over Joab. Joab set out, traveled throughout Israel, and returned to Jerusalem.
5 Joab gave David the census total for the people: throughout Israel there were 1,100,000 men who could wield a sword, and in Judah 470,000 men who could wield a sword.
6 But he did not count Levi and Benjamin among them, because the king’s command was repugnant to Joab.
7 This matter displeased God, and he struck Israel.
8 David said to God, “I have sinned greatly by doing this. Now, please take away the guilt of your servant, for I have acted very foolishly.”
9 The LORD spoke to Gad, David’s seer:
10 “Go and tell David, ‘This is what the LORD says: “I am offering you three things. Choose one of them, and I will do it to you.”’”
11 Gad went to David and said to him, “This is what the LORD says: ‘Choose for yourself:
12 either three years of famine, or three months of defeat before your adversaries, with the sword of your enemies overtaking you, or three days of the sword of the LORD and pestilence in the land, with the Angel of the LORD bringing destruction throughout all the territory of Israel.’ Now consider what answer I should take back to the one who sent me.”
13 David said to Gad, “I am in great distress. Let me fall into the hand of the LORD, for his compassion is very great; but do not let me fall into human hands.”
14 So the LORD sent a pestilence on Israel, and seventy thousand men of Israel fell.
15 God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it. But as he was destroying it, the LORD looked and relented from the disaster. He said to the destroying angel, “Enough! Now withdraw your hand.” The Angel of the LORD was standing by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
16 David looked up and saw the Angel of the LORD standing between earth and heaven, with his sword drawn in his hand, stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, covered in sackcloth, fell facedown.
17 David said to God, “Wasn’t I the one who ordered the people to be counted? I am the one who sinned and did great wrong. But these sheep, what have they done? LORD my God, please let your hand be against me and my father’s household, and not against your people with this plague.”
18 The Angel of the LORD told Gad to tell David that David should go up and build an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
19 David went up in accordance with the word Gad had spoken in the name of the LORD.
20 Ornan turned and saw the angel, and his four sons who were with him hid themselves. Ornan was threshing wheat.
21 David came to Ornan. Ornan looked up and saw David, came out from the threshing floor, and bowed before David with his face to the ground.
22 David said to Ornan, “Give me the site of the threshing floor so I can build an altar to the LORD there. Give it to me for its full price, so the plague may be stopped among the people.”
23 Ornan said to David, “Take it, and let my lord the king do whatever seems good to him. Look, I give the oxen for burnt offerings, the threshing sledges for wood, and the wheat for the grain offering. I give it all.”
24 But King David said to Ornan, “No! I will buy it for its full price. I will not take what is yours for the LORD, or offer a burnt offering that costs me nothing.”
25 David paid Ornan six hundred shekels of gold by weight for the site.
26 David built an altar to the LORD there and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. He called on the LORD, and the LORD answered him with fire from heaven on the altar of burnt offering.
27 Then the LORD spoke to the angel, and he put his sword back into its sheath.
28 At that time, when David saw that the LORD had answered him at the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, he offered a sacrifice there.
29 At that time, the tabernacle of the LORD, which Moses had made in the wilderness, and the altar of burnt offering were at the sanctuary on the high place in Gibeon.
30 David could not go before it to seek God, because he was terrified by the sword of the Angel of the LORD.
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