1 ONCE AGAIN THE ISRAELITES felt the LORD's anger, when he incited David against them and gave him orders that Israel and Judah should be counted. 2So he instructed Joab and the officers of the army with him to go round all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, and make a record of the people and report the number to him. 3Joab answered, 'Even if the LORD your God should increase the people a hundredfold and your majesty should live to see it, what pleasure would that give your majesty?' 4But Joab and the officers were overruled by the king and they left his presence in order to count the people. 5They crossed the Jordan and began at Aroer and the level land of the gorge, proceeding towards Gad and Jazer. 6They came to Gilead and to the land of the Hittites, to Kadesh, and then to Dan and Iyyon and so round towards Sidon. 7They went as far as the walled city of Tyre and all the towns of the Hivites and Canaanites, and then went on to the Negeb of Judah at Beersheba. 8They covered the whole country and arrived back at Jerusalem after nine months and twenty days. 9Joab reported to the king the total number of people: the number of able-bodied men, capable of bearing arms, was eight hundred thousand in Israel and five hundred thousand in Judah.
10After he had counted the people David's conscience smote him, and he said to the LORD, 'I have done a very wicked thing: I pray thee, LORD, remove thy servant's guilt, for I have been very foolish.' 11He rose next morning, and meanwhile the command of the LORD had come to the prophet Gad, David's seer, 12to go and speak to David: 'This is the word of the LORD: I have three things in store for you; choose one and I will bring it upon you.' 13So Gad came to David and repeated this to him and said, 'Is it to be three years of famine in your land, or three months of flight with the enemy at your heels, or three days of pestilence in your land? Consider carefully what answer I am to take back to him who sent me.' 14Thereupon David said to Gad, 'I am in a desperate plight; let us fall into the hands of the LORD, for his mercy is great; and let me not fall into the hands of men.' 15So the LORD sent a pestilence throughout Israel from morning till the hour of dinner, and from Dan to Beersheba seventy thousand of the people died. 16Then the angel stretched out his arm towards Jerusalem to destroy it; but the LORD repented of the evil and said to the angel who was destroying the people, 'Enough! Stay your hand.' At that moment the angel of the LORD was standing by the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
17When David saw the angel who was striking down the people, he said to the LORD, 'It is I who have done wrong, the sin is mine; but these poor sheep, what have they done? Let thy hand fall upon me and upon my family.' 18That same day Gad came to David and said to him, 'Go and set up an altar to the LORD on the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite.' 19David did what Gad told him to do, and went up as the LORD had commanded. 20When Araunah looked down and saw the king and his servants coming over towards him, he went out, prostrated himself low before the king 21and said, 'Why has your majesty come to visit his servant?' David answered, 'To buy the threshing-floor from you to build an altar to the LORD, so that the plague which has attacked the people may be stopped.' 22Araunah answered David, 'I beg your majesty to take it and sacrifice what you think fit. I have here the oxen for a whole-offering, and their harness and the threshing-sledges for the fuel.' 23Araunah gave it all to the king for his own use and said to him, 'May the LORD your God accept you.' 24But the king said to Araunah, 'No, I will buy it from you; I will not offer to the LORD my God whole-offerings that have cost me nothing.' So David bought the threshing-floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. 25He built an altar to the LORD there and offered whole-offerings and shared-offerings. Then the LORD yielded to his prayer for the land; and the plague in Israel stopped.
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