2 Samuel 24:10-25

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

Judgment on David’s Sin

¹⁰ But afterward, David was stricken to the heart because he had numbered the people. David said to the Lord, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O Lord, I pray you, take away the guilt of your servant, for I have done very foolishly.”^{(A) 11} When David rose in the morning, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Gad, David’s seer, saying,^{(B) 12} “Go and say to David: Thus says the Lord: Three things I offer^[a] you; choose one of them, and I will do it to you.”^{(C) 13} So Gad came to David and told him; he asked him, “Shall seven years of famine come to you on your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ pestilence in your land? Now consider and decide what answer I shall return to the one who sent me.” ¹⁴ Then David said to Gad, “I am in great distress; let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great, but let me not fall into human hands.”^(D)

¹⁵ So the Lord sent a pestilence on Israel from that morning until the appointed time, and seventy thousand of the people died, from Dan to Beer-sheba.^{(E) 16} But when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord relented concerning the evil and said to the angel who was bringing destruction among the people, “It is enough; now stay your hand.” The angel of the Lord was standing^[b] by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. David looked up and saw the angel of the Lord standing between earth and heaven and in his hand a drawn sword stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell on their faces.^{[c](F) 17} When David saw the angel who was destroying the people, he said to the Lord, “I alone have sinned, and I, the shepherd, have done evil,^[d] but these sheep, what have they done? Let your hand, I pray, be against me and against my father’s house.”^(G)

David’s Altar on the Threshing Floor

¹⁸ That day Gad came to David and said to him, “Go up and erect an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.”^{(H) 19} Following Gad’s instructions, David went up, as the Lord had commanded. ²⁰ When Araunah looked down, he saw the king and his servants coming toward him, and Araunah went out and prostrated himself before the king with his face to the ground. ²¹ Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?” David said, “To buy the threshing floor from you in order to build an altar to the Lord, so that the plague may be averted from the people.”^{(I) 22} Then Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him; here are the oxen for the burnt offering and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood.^{(J) 23} All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king.” And Araunah said to the king, “May the Lord your God respond favorably to you.”^(K)

²⁴ But the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will buy them from you for a price; I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.^{(L) 25} David built there an altar to the Lord and offered burnt offerings and offerings of well-being. So the Lord answered his supplication for the land, and the plague was averted from Israel.^(M)