¹² I will strike them with pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.”^(A)

¹⁰ Now let me alone so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, and of you I will make a great nation.”^(A)

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.”^{(A) 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.”^(B)

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.^(C)

David’s Census of Israel and Judah

24 Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go, count the people of Israel and Judah.”^(A)

⁹ Nevertheless those who died by the plague were twenty-four thousand.^(A)

⁴⁶ Moses said to Aaron, “Take your censer, put fire on it from the altar and lay incense on it and carry it quickly to the congregation and make atonement for them. For wrath has gone out from the Lord; the plague has begun.”^{(A) 47} So Aaron took it as Moses had ordered and ran into the middle of the assembly, where the plague had already begun among the people. He put on the incense and made atonement for the people.^{(B) 48} He stood between the dead and the living, and the plague was stopped.^{(C) 49} Those who died by the plague were fourteen thousand seven hundred, besides those who died in the affair of Korah.^(D)

³ Then they said, “The God of the Hebrews has revealed himself to us; let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness to sacrifice to the Lord our God, or he will fall upon us with pestilence or sword.”^(A)