⁸ And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted.^(A)

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

² So David said to Joab and the commanders of the army, “Go, number Israel, from Beer-sheba to Dan, and bring me a report, so that I may know their number.”^(A)

¹⁷ I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies,^(A)

¹⁶ I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted.^(A)

²³ David did not count those below twenty years of age, for the Lord had promised to make Israel as numerous as the stars of heaven.^{(A) 24} Joab son of Zeruiah began to count them but did not finish, yet wrath came upon Israel for this, and the number was not entered into the account of the Annals of King David.^(B)

⁵ Joab gave the total count of the people to David. In all Israel there were one million one hundred thousand men who drew the sword, and in Judah four hundred seventy thousand who drew the sword.^{(A) 6} But he did not include Levi and Benjamin in the numbering, for the king’s command was abhorrent to Joab.^(B)

²² For the Lord will not cast away his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself.^(A)

⁶ For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession.^(A)

⁷ “It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples.^{(B) 8} It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.^(C)