⁸ And Your servant is in the midst of Your people whom You ^(A)have chosen, a great people, ^(B)too numerous to be numbered or counted.

⁵ Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and ^(A)count the ^(B)stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, ^(C)“So shall your ^(D)descendants be.”

² So David said to Joab and to the leaders of the people, “Go, number Israel from Beersheba to Dan, ^(A)and bring the number of them to me that I may know it.”

¹⁷ blessing I will ^(A)bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants ^(B)as the stars of the heaven ^(C)and as the sand which is on the seashore; and ^(D)your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies.

¹⁶ And ^(A)I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if a man could number the dust of the earth, then your descendants also could be numbered.

²³ But David did not take the number of those twenty years old and under, because ^(A)the Lord had said He would multiply Israel like the ^(B)stars of the heavens. ²⁴ Joab the son of Zeruiah began a census, but he did not finish, for ^(C)wrath came upon Israel because of this census; nor was the number recorded in the account of the chronicles of King David.

⁵ Then Joab gave the sum of the number of the people to David. All Israel had one million one hundred thousand men who drew the sword, and Judah had four hundred and seventy thousand men who drew the sword. ^6 (A)But he did not count Levi and Benjamin among them, for the king’s ^[a]word was abominable to Joab.

²² For ^(A)the Lord will not forsake ^(B)His people, ^(C)for His great name’s sake, because ^(D)it has pleased the Lord to make you His people.