1    ^noteOnce 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. 2   So he instructed Joab and the officers of the army ^note 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. 3   Joab 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?’ 4   But Joab and the officers were overruled by the king and they left his presence in order to count the people. 5   They crossed the Jordan and began at Aroer and the level land of the gorge, proceeding towards Gad ^note and Jazer. 6   They came to Gilead and to the land of the Hittites, to Kadesh, ^note and then to Dan and Iyyon ^note and so

Various events of David's reign round ^note towards Sidon. 7   They 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. 8   They covered the whole country and arrived back at Jerusalem after nine months and twenty days. 9   Joab 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.

10   After he had counted the people David's conscience ^note 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.’ 11   He rose next morning, and meanwhile the command of the Lord had come to the prophet Gad, David's seer, to go and speak to David: 12   ‘This is the word of the Lord: I have three things in store for you; choose one and I will bring it upon you.’ 13   So Gad came to David and repeated this to him and said, ‘Is it to be three ^note 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.’ 14   Thereupon 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.’ 15   So 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. 16   Then 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.

17   When 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.’ 18   That 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.’ 19   David did what Gad told him to do, and went up as the Lord had commanded. 20   When Araunah looked down and saw the king and his servants coming over towards him, he went out, prostrated himself low before the king and said, 21   ‘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.’ 22   Araunah 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.’ 23   Araunah ^note gave it all to the king for his own use and said to

Various events of David's reign him, ‘May the Lord your God accept you.’ 24   But 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. 25   He 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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