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.”^{(A) 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.”^{(B) 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.^{(C) 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.”^(D)

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.^{(E) 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.^(F)