First Book of Chronicles 21

¹ Satan rose against Israel and incited David to take a census of the Israelites.

² David said to Joab and to the senior army officers, ‘Go, and take a census of Israel, from Beersheba to Dan, then come back and tell me the total.’

³ Joab said, ‘May Yahweh multiply the people a hundred times! My lord king, are they not all servants of my lord? Why should my lord make this enquiry? Why should guilt be brought on Israel?’

⁴ But the king enforced his order on Joab, and Joab went away, covered the whole of Israel, and then returned to Jerusalem.

⁵ Joab gave David the figures for the census of the people: the whole of Israel numbered one million one hundred thousand men capable of drawing sword, and Judah four hundred and seventy thousand capable of drawing sword.

⁶ Joab had found the king’s command so distasteful that he had taken no census of Levi or of Benjamin.

⁷ God looked with displeasure on these proceedings, and he struck Israel.

⁸ Then David said to God, ‘I have committed a grave sin by doing this. But now I beg you to forgive your servant for this fault. I have been very foolish.’

⁹ Then Yahweh spoke to Gad, David’s seer,

¹⁰ ‘Go and say to David, “Yahweh says this: I offer you three things; choose one of them for me to do to you”.’

¹¹ So Gad went to David and said, ‘Yahweh, says this, “Take your choice:

¹² three years of famine, three months of disaster at the hands of your enemies, with the sword of your enemies thrusting at you, or the sword of Yahweh and three days’ pestilence in the country, with the angel of Yahweh ravaging all the territory of Israel”. Now decide how I am to answer him who sends me.’

¹³ ‘This is a hard choice’ David said to Gad. ‘But let me rather fall into the power of Yahweh, since his mercy is very great; and not into the power of men.’

¹⁴ So Yahweh sent a pestilence on Israel, and seventy thousand men of the Israelites died.

¹⁵ Then God sent the angel to Jerusalem to destroy it, but as he was about to destroy it, Yahweh looked and thought better of this evil; and he said to the destroying angel, ‘Enough! Now withdraw your hand.’ The angel of Yahweh was standing beside the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.

¹⁶ David, raising his eyes, saw the angel of Yahweh standing between earth and heaven, a drawn sword in his hand stretched out towards Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell on their faces.

¹⁷ ‘Was it not I who sinned, who did this most wicked thing? But these, this flock, what have they done? Yahweh my God, let your hand lie heavy on me and on my family; but let your people escape the plague.’

¹⁸ The angel of Yahweh then said to Gad, ‘David must go up and erect an altar to Yahweh on the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.’

¹⁹ So David went up at the word which Gad had spoken in the name of Yahweh.

²⁰ Now Oman, as he turned, had seen the angel and had hidden, with his four sons. Ornan was threshing wheat

²¹ when David came to him. Ornan looked down, saw David, came off the threshing-floor and with his face to the ground did homage to David.

²² Then David said to Ornan, ‘Let me have the site of this threshing-floor, to build an altar to Yahweh. Let me have it at its full price. For then the plague will be turned away from the people.’

²³ ‘Take it’ Ornan said to David ‘and let my lord the king do as he thinks right. Look, I will give you the oxen for holocausts, the threshing-sled for the wood and the wheat for the oblation. I give them all.’

²⁴ But King David said to Oman, ‘No. I must buy it from you at the full price; I will not take for Yahweh what belongs to you, offering holocausts that cost me nothing.’

²⁵ So David gave Ornan six hundred shekels of gold by weight for the site.

²⁶ David built an altar there to Yahweh and offered holocausts and communion sacrifices. He called on Yahweh, and Yahweh answered him with fire from heaven on the altar of holocaust

²⁷ and ordered the angel to sheathe his sword.

²⁸ Then it was, seeing that Yahweh had answered him on the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite, that David offered sacrifice there.

²⁹ The tabernacle of Yahweh that Moses had made in the wilderness and the altar of holocaust were at that time on the high place at Gibeon,

³⁰ but David had not been able to go into God’s presence there to consult him, so fearful was he of the sword of the angel of Yahweh.