David’s Census, Plague, and Purchase of the Temple Site
1 Chronicles 21:1-22:1
1Satan stood upon Israel and incited David to count Israel.2David said to Joab and to the rulers of the people, "Go, count Israel from Beersheba to Dan, and bring its number to me so that I may know it."3Joab said, "May the LORD add to his people a hundred times as many as they are. Are not all of them servants to my lord the king? Why does my lord seek this? Why should this become guilt for Israel?"4The king's word prevailed over Joab, so Joab went out and traveled through all Israel and came to Jerusalem.5Joab gave the number from the muster of the people to David. All Israel was one million one hundred thousand men drawing the sword, and Judah was four hundred seventy thousand men drawing the sword.6Levi and Benjamin were not counted among them, because the king's word had become abhorrent with Joab.7God considered this matter evil and struck Israel.8David said to God, "I have sinned greatly by doing this thing. Now please pass over the iniquity of your servant, for I have acted very foolishly."9The LORD spoke to Gad, David's seer, saying,10"Go and speak to David, saying, 'Thus says the LORD: I stretch three things over you; choose one of them for yourself, and I will do it for you.'"11Gad came to David and said, "Thus says the LORD: Choose for yourself."12"If three years of famine, or if three months of being snatched away before your enemies while the sword of your enemy overtakes you, or if three days of the sword of the LORD and pestilence in the land while the messenger of the LORD ruins throughout all the border of Israel. Now see what word I should return to the one who sent me."13David said to Gad, "Distress is upon me greatly. Let me fall, please, into the hand of the LORD, for his compassions are very many, but do not let me fall into the hand of man."14So the LORD sent a plague on Israel, and seventy thousand men of Israel fell.15God sent a messenger to Jerusalem to ruin it, and as he was ruining, the LORD saw and was sorry concerning the distress, and he said to the ruining messenger, "It is enough; now slacken your hand." The messenger of the LORD was standing with the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.16David lifted his eyes and saw the messenger of the LORD standing between the land and the heavens, with his sword drawn in his hand, stretched out over Jerusalem. David and the elders fell, covered with sackcloth, upon their faces.17David said to God, "Was it not I who said to count the people? I am the one who has sinned and done this evil, but these sheep, what have they done? O LORD my God, let your hand be upon me and upon the house of my father, but not upon your people for a plague."18The messenger of the LORD commanded Gad to tell David that he should go up and build an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.19David went up in accordance with the word Gad had spoken in the name of the LORD.20Ornan returned and saw the messenger, and his four sons who were with him were hiding themselves, while Ornan was treading wheat.21David came to Ornan, and Ornan looked and saw David and came out from the threshing floor and bowed down to David with his face to the ground.22David said to Ornan, "Give me the place of the threshing floor so that I may build on it an altar to the LORD. Give it to me for full silver, and let the plague be restrained from the people."23Ornan replied to David, "Take it, my lord the king, and do with it whatever seems good to you. See, I give you the oxen for burnt offerings, the threshing sledges for wood, and the wheat for the grain offering; I give it all."24King David said to Ornan, "No, for I will buy it for full silver. I will not lift what is yours for the LORD or offer a burnt offering for nothing."25David gave to Ornan, for the place, six hundred shekels of gold by weight.26David built there an altar to the LORD and offered up burnt offerings and peace offerings and called upon the LORD, and he answered him with fire from the heavens upon the altar of the burnt offering.27The LORD said to the messenger, and he returned his sword to its sheath.28At that time, when David saw that the LORD had answered him at the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, he offered sacrifices there.29The tabernacle of the LORD that Moses had made in the wilderness and the altar of the burnt offering were at that time at the high place in Gibeon.30David was not able to go before it to seek God, for he was terrified before the sword of the messenger of the LORD.
Chapter 22
1David declared, "This is the house of the LORD God, and this is the altar of burnt offering for Israel."