²¹ Then Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?”

^(A)And David said, “To buy the threshing floor from you, to build an altar to the Lord, that ^(B)the plague may be withdrawn from the people.”

⁶ And Jeremiah said, “The word of the Lord came to me, saying, ⁷ ‘Behold, Hanamel the son of Shallum your uncle will come to you, saying, “Buy my field which is in Anathoth, for the ^(A)right of redemption is yours to buy it.” ’ ⁸ Then Hanamel my uncle’s son came to me in the court of the prison according to the word of the Lord, and said to me, ‘Please buy my field that is in Anathoth, which is in the country of Benjamin; for the right of inheritance is yours, and the redemption yours; buy it for yourself.’ Then I knew that this was the word of the Lord. ⁹ So I bought the field from Hanamel, the son of my uncle who was in Anathoth, and ^(B)weighed out to him the money—seventeen shekels of silver. ¹⁰ And I signed the ^[a]deed and sealed it, took witnesses, and weighed the money on the scales. ¹¹ So I took the purchase deed, both that which was sealed according to the law and custom, and that which was open; ¹² and I gave the purchase deed to ^(C)Baruch the son of Neriah, son of Mahseiah, in the presence of Hanamel my uncle’s son, and in the presence of the ^(D)witnesses who signed the purchase deed, before all the Jews who sat in the court of the prison.

¹³ “Then I charged ^(E)Baruch before them, saying, ¹⁴ ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Take these deeds, both this purchase deed which is sealed and this deed which is open, and put them in an earthen vessel, that they may last many days.”

²² Then David said to Ornan, ^[a]“Grant me the place of this threshing floor, that I may build an altar on it to the Lord. You shall grant it to me at the full price, that the plague may be withdrawn from the people.”

The Altar on the Threshing Floor^(A)

¹⁸ And Gad came that day to David and said to him, ^(B)“Go up, erect an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.”

³ And Joab said to the king, “Now may the Lord your God ^(A)add to the people a hundred times more than there are, and may the eyes of my lord the king see it. But why does my lord the king desire this thing?”

³ Therefore David said to the Gibeonites, “What shall I do for you? And with what shall I make atonement, that you may bless ^(A)the inheritance of the Lord?”

⁴ And the Gibeonites said to him, “We will have no silver or gold from Saul or from his house, nor shall you kill any man in Israel for us.”

So he said, “Whatever you say, I will do for you.”

⁵ Then they answered the king, “As for the man who consumed us and plotted against us, that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the territories of Israel, ⁶ let seven men of his descendants be delivered ^(B)to us, and we will hang them before the Lord ^(C)in Gibeah of Saul, ^(D)whom the Lord chose.”

And the king said, “I will give them.”

⁷ But the king spared ^(E)Mephibosheth the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, because of ^(F)the Lord’s oath that was between them, between David and Jonathan the son of Saul. ⁸ So the king took Armoni and Mephibosheth, the two sons of ^(G)Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, whom she bore to Saul, and the five sons of ^[a]Michal the daughter of Saul, whom she ^[b]brought up for Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite; ⁹ and he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them on the hill ^(H)before the Lord. So they fell, all seven together, and were put to death in the days of harvest, in the first days, in the beginning of barley harvest.

¹⁰ Now ^(I)Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock, ^(J)from the beginning of harvest until the late rains poured on them from heaven. And she did not allow the birds of the air to rest on them by day nor the beasts of the field by night.

¹¹ And David was told what Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done. ¹² Then David went and took the bones of Saul, and the bones of Jonathan his son, from the men of ^(K)Jabesh Gilead who had stolen them from the street of ^[c]Beth Shan, where the ^(L)Philistines had hung them up, after the Philistines had struck down Saul in Gilboa. ¹³ So he brought up the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son from there; and they gathered the bones of those who had been hanged. ¹⁴ They buried the bones of Saul and Jonathan his son in the country of Benjamin in ^(M)Zelah, in the tomb of Kish his father. So they performed all that the king commanded. And after that ^(N)God heeded the prayer for the land.

⁸ and he went after the man of Israel into the tent and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her body. So ^(A)the plague was ^(B)stopped among the children of Israel.

⁴⁴ And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ⁴⁵ “Get away from among this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment.”

And they fell on their faces.

⁴⁶ So Moses said to Aaron, “Take a censer and put fire in it from the altar, put incense on it, and take it quickly to the congregation and make ^[a]atonement for them; ^(A)for wrath has gone out from the Lord. The plague has begun.” ⁴⁷ Then Aaron took it as Moses commanded, and ran into the midst of the assembly; and already the plague had begun among the people. So he put in the incense and made atonement for the people. ⁴⁸ And he stood between the dead and the living; so ^(B)the plague was stopped. ⁴⁹ Now those who died in the plague were fourteen thousand seven hundred, besides those who died in the Korah incident. ⁵⁰ So Aaron returned to Moses at the door of the tabernacle of meeting, for the plague had stopped.