Second Book of Samuel 24

¹ The anger of Yahweh once again blazed out against the Israelites and he incited David against them. ‘Go,’ he said ‘take a census of Israel and Judah.’

² The king said to Joab and to the senior army officers who were with him, ‘Now go throughout the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba and take a census of the people; I wish to know the size of the population.’

³ Joab said to the king, ‘May Yahweh your God multiply the people a hundred times while my lord the king still has eyes to see it, but why should my lord the king be so set on this?’

⁴ But the king enforced his order on Joab and the senior officers, and Joab and the senior officers went from the king’s presence to take a census of the people of Israel.

⁵ They crossed the Jordan and made a start with Aroer and the town that is in the middle of the wadi, moving on to the Gadites and towards Jazer.

⁶ They then went to Gilead and to Kadesh in the land of the Hittites; next they went on to Dan and from Dan made their way round towards Sidon.

⁷ They then came to the fortress of Tyre and to all the towns of the Hivites and Canaanites, ending up in the Negeb of Judah at Beersheba.

⁸ Having covered the whole country, they returned to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days.

⁹ Joab gave the king the figures for the census of the people; Israel numbered eight hundred thousand armed men capable of drawing sword, and Judah five hundred thousand men. The Pestilence. God’s forgiveness

¹⁰ But afterwards David’s heart misgave him for having taken a census of the people. ‘I have committed a grave sin’ David said to Yahweh. ‘But now, Yahweh, I beg you to forgive your servant for this fault. I have been very foolish.’

¹¹ But when David got up next morning, the following message had come from Yahweh to the prophet Gad, David’s seer,

¹² ‘Go and say to David, “Yahweh says this: I offer you three things; choose one of them for me to do to you”.’

¹³ So Gad went to David and told him. ‘Are three years of famine to come on you in your country’ he said ‘or will you flee for three months before your pursuing enemy, or would you rather have three days’ pestilence in your country? Now think, and decide how I am to answer him who sends me.’

¹⁴ David said to Gad, ‘This is a hard choice. But let us rather fall into the power of Yahweh, since his mercy is great, and not into the power of men.’

¹⁵ So David chose pestilence. It was the time of the wheat harvest. Yahweh sent a pestilence on Israel from the morning till the time appointed and plague ravaged the people, and from Dan to Beersheba seventy thousand men of them died.

¹⁶ The angel stretched out his hand towards Jerusalem to destroy it, but Yahweh thought better of this evil, and he said to the angel who was destroying the people, ‘Enough! Now withdraw your hand.’ The angel of Yahweh was beside the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite.

¹⁷ When David saw the angel who was ravaging the people, he spoke to Yahweh. ‘It was I who sinned;’ he said ‘I who did this wicked thing. But these, this flock, what have they done? Let your hand lie heavy on me then, and on my family.’ An altar is built

¹⁸ Gad went to David that day and said, ‘Go up and erect an altar to Yahweh on the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite’.

¹⁹ So at Gad’s bidding David went up as Yahweh had ordered him.

²⁰ When Araunah looked down and saw the king and his officers advancing towards him – Araunah was threshing the wheat – he came forward and with his face to the ground did the king homage.

²¹ ‘Why has my lord the king come to his servant?’ Araunah asked. David answered, ‘To buy the threshing-floor from you, in order to build an altar to Yahweh, so that the plague may leave the people’.

²² ‘Let my lord the king take it’ Araunah said to David ‘and offer up what he thinks right. Here are the oxen for the holocaust, the threshing-sled and the oxen’s yoke for the wood.

²³ The servant of my lord the king gives all this to the king. And’ Araunah said to the king ‘may Yahweh your God accept your offering.’

²⁴ But the king said to Araunah, ‘No, I must pay you money for it; I will not offer Yahweh my God holocausts that have cost me nothing’. So David paid fifty shekels in silver for the threshing-floor and Oxen.

²⁵ David built an altar to Yahweh there and offered holocausts and communion sacrifices. Then Yahweh took pity on the country and the plague was turned away from Israel.